1889.] PUBLIC DOCUMENT — No. 4. 321 



It is hardly worth while, therefore, for any student of 

 American afiairs to discuss the land-holding and the agricul- 

 tural problem here from an English stand-point. The rela- 

 tions existing between the landlords of England and their 

 tenants need only to be understood here to be avoided. No 

 argument with regard to the future of the United States can 

 legitimately be drawn from them. In the famous discussion 

 between Lord Beaconsfield and Lord Hartington, the latter 

 was charged with having "prepared the country for the 

 belief that the system of English agriculture is not formed 

 on what he calls a natural principle, but, supporting three 

 classes of the community, is one which has failed in conse- 

 quence, and will never be restored." In reply to this. Lord 

 Beaconsfield declared that there is no tenure of land which 

 can be devised except on the condition of furnishing three 

 incomes to three classes; viz., the proprietors of the soil, 

 the farmers as a middle class, and the agricultural peasants, 

 — those who toil with their own hands. To him citizen- 

 proprietorship was unknown. The farmer, in his classifica- 

 tion, was a peasant-proprietor, a tenant ; the owner of the 

 land is lord of the soil, the landlord. It is this complication 

 which weighs down the agriculture of England, and has re- 

 duced much of the land lying around her great local markets 

 to a sheep-pasture. 



" Much of the land of England," says Mr. Caird, " a far 

 greater proportion of it than is generally believed, is in the 

 possession of tenants for life, so heavily burthened with set- 

 tlement incumbrances that they have not means of improv- 

 ing the land which they are obliged to hold." While we 

 hear on the one hand constant complaints from the owner of 

 the vas't demands of his landed estates for buildings, drain- 

 age, machinery and improvements of every variety, we hear 

 constantly on the other of the embarrassment created by that 

 law which ' ' took away all claim of the tenant over every 

 addition he had annexed or incorporated with the land, the 

 moment that his interest, whether yearly or by lease, ex- 

 pired ; " and confiscated all his ' ' property in any engine or 

 machine annexed to the soil, though for the express purposes 

 of the farm, and without which it could not be profitably 

 occupied." In fact, all law governing the relations between 



