POLITICAL ECONOMY. 



357 



labourer, the proportion subsisting between the employment 

 whi'-li can be given and the number of ponton* who are in 

 search of employment, will .!(. nimi't tlio rate of wage*. In 

 the case of the farmer, tin- niuiutit -I accumulated, and 



.portunity afforded for employing or investing it, will 



line tlio rato of i>ri>tit. The rent of the landlord will bo 

 ....tli. -i- .-.-i >!' i ircumstanoes, which I shall comment 

 on in this lesson. 



ace, however, of a social order, the members of 



,. in -h ,.u'.' -lit wholly on the rent of agricultural land, is almost 



mitry. <'i-ri:iin customs exist which lead to 



the aooumulation of land in a fow hands, and certain lawa have 



offoct to this onstom, and havo even strengthened it. 

 I'll.- .-ustom applies to land only, or rather to what is called 



ate an expression which is a, little narrower than " land :" 

 for a person may havo a lease of a thousand years at u, nominal 



r even a fictitious rent ; and though, under these circum- 

 . his interest in the soil is practically as great as though 



1 the greatest ownership which the law allows, he is not 

 1 in law to have a real, but only a personal estate. 

 Again, there are certain other interests in land which do not 

 follow the custom alluded to that, namely, of primogeniture, 

 by which the estate of a deceased person devolves on his eldest 

 male child, to the exclusion of all other children ; but by far 

 the largest portion of the land contained in the United Kingdom 

 is subject to this custom. It is perfectly clear that the exist- 

 ence of this custom, joined to the power which persons possess 

 by law of tying up or limiting their estates in favour of persons 

 who are yet unborn, must, as time goes on, make the number of 

 estates less, and their size greater, and must confer on the 

 owners of such estates extraordinary powers of exacting high 

 prices for the temporary use of that land, of which, in many 

 localities, one or two persons possess a real monopoly. It would 

 be absurd to doubt, that when an individual or a corporation 

 possesses all the land, for example, in the vicinity of a growing 

 town, the price which may be demanded for the occupation of 

 such land will be much higher than it would be if the owner- 

 ship were divided among fifty persons. The price of any article 

 is as much determined by the necessity of those who sell as it 

 is by the needs of those who buy ; and if, uiiiler peculiar cir- 

 cumstances, the buyer is at the mercy of the seller, the price 

 will be raised by the latter to as great a height as the former 

 can endure. 



Now it is not my object to advert to the social or political 

 consequences of such a custom as that of primogeniture, and of 

 such a law as that which enabloa a possessor of property, and 

 especially of land, to create b> any act of his own an interest in 

 such land on behalf of unborn persons. The results of such a 

 system may be, as some have contended, of great public benefit ; 

 or they may be, as others allege, exceedingly mischievous. But 

 no one can doubt that they do produce two or three notable 

 economical effects. They tend to decrease the number of land- 

 owners, and to increase the bigness of estates. They tend 

 towards enabling the owners of these estates to exact a monopoly 

 price for the occupation of land. They bring about a state of 

 things in which a particular social class lives on the rent of 

 land ; and, it may be added, they induce results which are 

 peculiarly characteristic of this country, and which give an 

 interest to the question of rent, which is not so prominent in 

 discussing the economical condition of other countries. There 

 is hardly any other country in the civilised world where we can 

 find such a person as the English or Irish farmer, that is, a 

 person who ordinarily rents land from year to year, with a 

 liability of being turned off his farm at the discretion of the 

 landowner, and who employs his capital in cultivating the soil, 

 without other assistance from the capital of his landowner than 

 that which is contained in the use of the land which the owner 

 has purchased. The case is a little different in Scotland, for in 

 that kingdom the jraut of a lease for eighteen years is all but 

 universal. 



In other countries, the occupier of land is generally both 

 owner and labourer. In some cases he is owner, but not 

 labourer, giving the labour of management only, and hiring 

 manual labour at wages. In some localities, especially in 

 Southern France and Italy, there is a curious partnership be- 

 tween the owner and the occupier. And lastly, there is, or 

 rather was, a peculiar kind of occupancy in Ireland, in which 

 the occupier gave his manual labour, but had only a precarious 



intercut in the land which ho cultivated. In ordar to expound 

 the nature of rent, it will be nummary thai I should give 

 hhort description of these different kind* of holdings, Mid point 

 oat some of the peculiarities of each. We hall, perhaps, then 

 be able to discover which form of tenure produce* moot at leMt 

 coat, and which maintain* the largest number of persons in the 

 greatest comfort. That country U not always the best off which 

 produces most wealth at least cost, if the distribution of that 

 vhich is produced is very unequal, and, consequently, if tb.- 

 country exhibits a growing poverty in a large number of pflttom 

 aide by side with the growing opulence of a few. 



The English form of hind tenure was the result of the feudal 

 system, as established and confirmed in this country after th 

 Norman conquest. In order to secure the submutgion of the 

 Anglo-Saxon inhabitants, the Norman monarch* established a 

 great militia system, the soldiers of which were all paid by the 

 possession of land. In theory, this land was the compensation 

 for military service ; the owners, called tenants, being liable to 

 serve with men and arms at the king's command. In fact, these 

 tenants obtained inheritable estates, but under the condition 

 that the chief of the family should be bound perpetually to this 

 service. Hence arose the custom that the person liable to the 

 obligation should be invested with the land. Such a privilege 

 was, however, not the advantage which it is in our days, when 

 the obligation has been for centuries no longer imposed. Owing 

 to the wretched state of agriculture, hind was the cheapest of 

 commodities. It hardly bore a rent, for the so-called rents of 

 the Middle Ages were rather taxes than rents, exacted from 

 occupiers for the privilege of living on and working the soil. 

 The most valuable property which persons possessed ia that time 

 was personal estate, as agricultural stock, manufactured goods, 

 i and money. Ordinarily, a quarter of wheat, or half-a-dozen 

 sheep, or a fair-sized ox, would buy an acre of land fit for arable 

 I cultivation. But I cannot better illustrate the value of hind at 

 this remote period than by the fact, that on a well-stocked and 

 well-tilled estate the stock and implements were worth three 

 times as much as the land which the husbandman cultivated- 

 By-and-bye we shall see how it is that this proportion has been 

 reversed. 



In all newly-settled countries, the same person is at onco 

 owner and occupier. The advantages which labour can secure 

 to itself are so great, that everybody strives to employ what 

 property he has in the most advantageous manner to himself. 

 There are few lenders, for every one can employ as much capital 

 as he can get. Labour at wages is scarce and dear, for when 

 land is cheap and easily obtained, nobody is willing to work 

 another's farm, if he con get one of his own. The system has 

 its evils as well as its benefits. Labour is scattered about, the 

 formation of an intermediate class of traders is discouraged or 

 slowly developed, there is no leisure class, and therefore very 

 little education and refinement. There are few manufactures, 

 for these require a considerable capital and a stationary or 

 abundant population. 



Such a state of society characterised our own colonies and a 

 large portion of the United States. It seemed expedient to 

 some of those who had the good of the colonists at heart, that 

 certain measures should be adopted in order to check this dis- 

 position of population to scatter itself over the soil. The most 

 obvious means was to limit the facility of acquiring hind ; and 

 an eminent Australian colonist, who was also a considerable 

 economist, Mr. Gibbon Wakefield, devised a plan. He induced 

 the local legislature to fix the price of all hind which could be 

 bought from the State at a pound per acre, and to devote the 

 proceeds to assisting emigration. In this way it was supposed 

 that population would be restrained from dispersing itself, while 

 the fund which was derived from the sale of hind, being devoted 

 towards the growth of the colonial population, would supply the 

 settler with cheap labour. The plan, however, after a short 

 trial, broke down. The extraordinary mineral riches of the 

 colony attracted a prodigious immigration, and thereupon the 

 artificial supply of inhabitants was felt or believed to be no 

 longer necessary, especially as it was seen that such persons 

 as were introduced at the expense of the landowners would be 

 certain to go to the mines. But the chief opposition to this 

 scheme came from the existing population of labourers. They 

 argued that the fund was devoted towards cheapening labour, 

 gave strenuous opposition to the scheme, and brought about 

 finally that it was abandoned. 



