322 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [JaD. 



landlord and tenant in England " is based on the feudal 

 system, which gave the landlord a certain superiority over 

 his tenants." No such state of affairs exists or can exist in 

 the United States. 



Says Hoskins : " The real property laws of England, from 

 the period immediately succeeding the conquest down to the 

 present time, present a history consistent with itself in one 

 particular, — that of a perpetual struggle of rival interests. 

 The parties to the conflict have differed in successive periods ; 

 the feudal sovereign, the baron, the churchman, the lawyer, 

 and the land-owner, have each entered into the strife in turn, 



— each as the pressure of adverse power or of selfish interest 

 impelled them. The result of all these struggles was the 

 system bequeathed two centuries ago, and under which, with 

 slight modifications, the business of the country is still carried 

 on. But in those strug-orles there are two voices that were 

 never heard, two interests little thought of, — those of the 

 political economist and the agriculturist. Can it be won- 

 dered at, if the state of those laws be found productive of 

 results injurious to the best practices of the one and violating 

 the first principles of the other? There is in the history of 

 England no instance to be found in which the ripened and 

 intelligent desire of the community — clearly and repeatedly 

 expressed through the most public, the most able, the most 

 learned channels, upon a subject which has received pro- 

 longed and exhaustive investigation by a succession of royal 

 commissions — has waited so long and so patiently upon the 

 hand of legislation as that which has asked for the reform of 

 our law of real property, — especially as affecting the ac- 

 quisition and transfer of land. Whether the question be 

 looked at from the point of view of the jurist, as a question 

 of law reform, in the restoration of simple and inexpensive 

 instead of complicated and costly procedure ; or from that of 

 the agriculturist, in respect of the influence that this branch 

 of the law exercises over our most important home industry ; 

 or from that of the political economist, pleading for the 

 rights of the community in the distribution of public wealth, 



— the cry is still the same : Free the land ; release it from 

 the shackles in which time and custom and interests — long 

 passed away — have entangled it, obstructing its adaptation 



