LAND LAWS AND TKANSFER 181 



Many advantages undeniably flow from an increase in the 

 number of proprietors of the soil, and where men do not 

 become owners of small tenant farmers. But the creation 

 of either class must remain a matter of individual enter- 

 prise. No State can afford costly experiments on a large 

 scale, the success of which is doubtful. 



Whether land is farmed high or low, by large or small 

 farmers, by peasa.nt owners or capitalist tenants, it is 

 socially and politically expedient that legislation should 

 remove all artificial obstacles to the acquisition of small 

 interests in land, or the development of high farming, which 

 hitherto has never obtained a fair chance of displaying 

 its capabilities. In either case the preliminaries are the 

 same, a reform of the laud laws, and a scientific and prac- 

 tical agricultural education. 



The object of land law reform is twofold : the extinction 

 of all hindrances to the full development of landed pro- 

 perty, and the simplification of the transfer of land. To 

 the first head belong such changes as the abolition of 

 primogeniture and entail, and other changes which assimi- 

 late the laws of real and personal property. The declaration 

 of the spirit of the law in favour of primogeniture appears, 

 from the rarity of intestacy, to be a matter of slight im- 

 portance. It is different with the other objects of land law 

 reform. Before 1882 the land was held by a series of life 

 tenants, each of whom in turn, so soon as they arrived at 

 the age of so-called discretion, deprived themselves irre- 

 vocably of the free use of their estates. Thus life tenants 

 were hampered with restrictions upon the development of 

 their property, burdened with encumbrances, unable and 

 unwilling to spend money on improvements. Lord Cairns's 

 Settled Land Act made one gigantic stride in the right 

 direction; impending legislation makes a second. 



