262 LAND REFORM 



and slow. No doubt "Free Trade in Land" would 

 result, eventually, in putting a large number of estates 

 on the market, but the cultivators would certainly be 

 in no better position than now, and probably in a far 

 worse position.^ 



Seeing that tenant farmers, as a rule, have no spare 

 money to buy, and the peasants certainly have none, 

 the buyers would be of two classes : the first class 

 would consist of small capitalists, who would buy land 

 as an investment and let it at the highest rent they 

 could get. This would be a disadvantage, as small 

 owners — either from necessity or from the commercial 

 spirit — are generally the hardest of landlords. The 

 second class of buyers would be wealthy men desirous 

 of becoming " county " people, who would buy up any 

 estates offered, as indeed to a considerable extent they 

 are now doing. 



There would be no gain in this ; for of the two, a 

 landed aristocracy is, as far as the tenants are con- 

 cerned, perhaps preferable to a landed plutocracy. So 

 that *' free trade " in land, if realized to-morrow, unless 

 accompanied by a Land Purchase Bill, would simply 

 have the effect of locking up land in the hands of a 

 new set of owners. It would retard, rather than ad- 

 vance, the one object in view, which is to get the soil 



1 The Irish "Encumbered Estates Act" of 1849 no doubt enabled 

 land of the value of many millions sterling to be sold, but the tenants 

 were not the purchasers. On the contrarj', the land thus set " free " was 

 too frequently bought by capitalists who dealt in a commercial manner 

 with the property they had acquired. Many of them raised rents regard- 

 less of the tenants' position and rights, and the Irish farmers often found 

 themselves worse off than they were under the old squireens. The 

 present writer remembers the advertisements for the sale of these lands 

 and seeing frequently at the bottom of them, "These rentals are capable 

 of great improvement,'' etc. 



