&ljc jFarmer's iHcmttjln bisttar. 



57 



Pratic governments. The faster the population I n house of worship. The people submitted, — 

 'ncreases, the i e rapidly does this great cor- fur Ik had a right lo do as he phased with his owr, 



reel hi- of the accumulation of property operate : 

 the greater the number of Inns, the more mi- 

 nim is the division pf the pareul's wealth. 



But ili is distribution nl estates is hostile to the 

 whole spirit of the institutions of Great Britain, 

 which is essentially aristocratic ; and English 

 law therefore seeks to obviate it by two remar- 

 kable and unnatural provisions, — the right ol 

 prinogeniture and the law of entail. By the 

 farmer, tit ihe detah of the parent intestate the 

 real property descends wholly to the eldest son, 

 to the exclusion of the daughters and younger 

 sons: by the latter, a landholder may " lie up" 

 his estate, as the phrase goes, i < > r successive 

 generations, so that a future possessor of it can- 

 uol alienate it, hut must transmit it unimpaired 

 to the person standing next to him in the line of 

 heirs. Strictly spenking, indeed, as Alison re- 

 marks, "the English I.i \v does not recognize en- 

 tails; yet they are practically established by the 

 tendency of public feeling, and the succession of 

 family settlements, by which great estates are ef- 

 fectually secured front alienation." 



The right of the eldest son to the whole real 

 estate creates or sanctions an artificial and un- 

 reasonable distinction between him and his bro- 

 thers and sisters ; and when there is no such 

 estate to be distributed, it gives him a seeming 

 claim for a larger share, if not the w hole, nl the 

 personal property; the law which expressly en- 

 joins on inequality in the one case permits and 



em rages il in the other. Of course, frequent 



partitions are made on more equitable principles: 

 our only point is. that they are much less frequent 

 in England than in other countries, where tin' 

 law favors in every ease the eipial division of an 

 estate amon:' the children. 



Sneh a country is France, where the law regu- 



lating the descent of property is even more de- 

 mocratic than in the United Stales. It prevents 

 a man from disposing of his wealth as he sees 

 fit, even by will : the right of each child to a 

 portion is protected by law, only a small fraction 

 of tin? original estate being left to the free dis- 

 posal of its first owner. And the consequence is, 

 though this law of succession has not been in force 

 half a century, that the class of landed proprietors 

 in France is more numerous than that winch subsists 

 altogether upon wages — while in England it is but 

 one sixtieth part of their number. In France the 

 number of separate properties taxed for the im- 



potfoneier, in 1838, had risen to 10,896,000. The 

 average size of each property was only about 

 fourteen acres: Ihe number of land-owners, in- 

 cluding their wives and children, is estimated at 

 two thirds of the population of the country.— 

 The peasants are proprietors of the ground ihey 

 cultivate; and though the hind owned by an in- 

 dividual often does not exceed a kitchen garden 

 in size, and is tilled entirely by the spade, its 

 gross product, under his patient and economical 

 htisbn airy, much exceeds that of a correspond- 

 ing extent of surface in one of the model mon- 

 ster farms of England. Three and a half mil- 

 lions of peasants cultivate English ground, not a 

 foot of which belongs to them, and depend en- 

 tirely on Wages, which, in the best years, hardly 

 supply them with the necessaries id' life, and 

 which le uc them, if the' crop fails, or the price 

 of provisions rises, in imminent peril ol starva- 

 tion. The total animal value of the lands which 

 ihey till »n these hard terms is known to exceed 

 forty millions sterling [$200,000,000]; and ibis 

 immense income is monopolized by a few hun- 

 dreds of the nobility and country gentry,— mo- 

 nopolized by means of legislation which opposes 

 the order (il Providence, and perverts the natu- 

 ral course of do. ncMir -affection, lis rendering 



divisi r alienation of it almost impossible. 



The princely domains of the Dukes of Suth- 

 erland and iiiicclench comprise w hole comities 

 respectively in the north and south of Scotland; 

 and the latter had the power and the audacity, 

 a few years ami, to say to thousands of families 

 belonging to ihe Free or Seceding Scottish Kirk, 

 Ihe most numerous denomination in the land, 

 that they should not have a church in which to 

 worship God according to their consciences, 

 though they were able lo build and pay lor it: 

 Ihe whole country, for leagues around, was bis. 

 and he would not give, base or si II a foot of il at 

 any price, it' il was lo be, used lor the erection of 



mil the congregation assembled, .Sabbath alter 

 Sabbath, in the open air, in the public highway, — 

 which, happily, is not owned altogether by the 

 Duke ol' ISuccleiich. A nation submits to social 

 oppression, to ihe tyranny of wealth, much more 

 quietly than lo political oppression: if Parlia- 

 ment hail prohibited an equally large portion of 

 the people from building a single house of wor- 

 ship for their God, the act would have excited a 

 civil war. 



The gigantic estates of many of the English 

 nobility, such as the Dukes of Northumberland 

 and Devonshire, the Marquess of Westminster, 

 the Earls of Harrowby, Leriesler, and Filzwil- 

 liain, though they may not cover several coun- 

 ties, afford incomes which exceed those of many 

 Crowned heads in Europe: these nobles own 

 more rich land in the heart of England than 

 some independent princes govern in Germany. 

 And the vast possessions, as a general rule, go 

 on augmenting every generation, either from the 

 union of es'ates by marriage, or from the an- 

 nexation by purchase of smaller properties in 

 the vicinity: their growth is easy : their partition 

 or alienation is rendered by law almost imprac- 

 ticable. Ireland itself, wretched, starving Ire- 

 land, is owned, as il were in counties, by the 

 English and Irish nobility and gentry. It is car- 

 ved out into monster estates, which are leased 

 piecemeal to middlemen and great farmers, who 

 again subdivide and underlet the land which ihey 

 lure, till the division is brought down to the little 

 conacre patches of the miserable peasants. Many 

 a princely income is made up from an immense 

 aggregation of rents not exceeding 5/. or 10/. 

 each, and is thus wrung by driblets from the tin- 

 happy tenants, who live on " lumper" potatoes 

 and " pressagh," that they may be able to pay it. 

 Throughout Great Britain and Ireland the word 

 farmer denotes one who hires the ground which 

 he cultivates, while in the United States it signi- 

 fies almost without exception, the proprietor of 

 the soil. In France and Switzerland, also, he 

 who tills the land is the owner of it, and small 

 though his property be, its product is sufficient 

 for his wants. 



The Review, taking up the " English school of 

 political economy," which looks only to the pro- 

 duction of wealth without regarding its distribu- 

 tion, and which seriously maintains that the di- 

 vision of bind and capital is an evil, proceeds to 

 a detail of some of the great sufferings which 

 have grown out of the expulsion of the poor 

 tenantry. A very striking ease, from ihe Report 

 of the Commissioners on the occupation of land 

 in Ireland, is presented where Lord Kenmane 

 is the landlord, the barony of Bantry is the scene, 

 and the Rev. Christopher Truman, the Catholic 

 curate of the parish, is the witness. This testi- 

 mony was substantially corroborated by his lord- 

 ship's own agent, who was put upon the stand 

 for the express purpose of confuting or explain- 

 ing away the adverse statements. .Mr. Truman 

 says :— 



"Up to the year 1640, the consolidation of 

 farms, and the consequent wholesale eviction of 

 tenants, was alinosl unknown in the barony. 

 Lord Kenmare commenced in the year 1840 by 

 ejecting from the lands of Ahills 22 families, 

 comprising 135 individuals. He ejected in the 

 years I84'<> and 1H43, lb' families, comprising 232 

 individuals. Total evicted from the Ken mare 

 property, 116 families, comprising 367 individuals. 

 I am vastly under the mark ; I might say a good 

 deal more. The persons evicted paid their rem 

 regular I j : the rents amounted from 5/. !0s. to 

 ■Ml. each, and some id' ihem more. They were, 

 with very lew exceptions, extremely honest, well 

 disposed and industrious persons; and the ob- 

 ject to be obtained by the consolidation of these 

 farms, and depriving these unfortunate people of 

 their only means of subsistence, I cannot tell." 



"What in general has become of them r" — 

 "The children of some of them have been beg- 

 ging; some of them have died in the most 

 dreadful di-iress; gome of them ! know to be 

 comfortabe; and some of them have had typhus 

 fever. I attended one family of eleven imme- 



diately after being ejected. They were all of 

 fever, and the fuller was obliged lo get out of 

 bed to attend lo them, and he was in the fever 

 himself; and 1 was obliged to remove one out of 

 bed in order to bear the confession of another. — 

 and I believe that to be solely caused by Lord 

 Ken mare's dispossessing the people. 



" Was anything done by I. mil Kenmare or his 

 agent to assist these people?" — "Nothing what- 

 ever. I went myself to Lord Kenmare, and 

 wrote to him the following letter: — 



" My Loud, — When the cause ol' the distressed or af- 

 flicted is to I,,: advocated, 1 I'eel tint it would lie superflu- 

 ous to make an apology for trespassing on your Lordship's 

 lime. You arc I suppose, my Lord aware, tli.it many 

 honest, industrious persons have been ejected from your 

 estate in Ihe parish ol Binlry. It is to plead the cause 

 of these unfortunate but honest people, ami to enlist, if 

 possible, your Lordship's sympathy in their behalf, that 1 

 have come lo Killarney. May I request, my Lord, the 

 favor ol an interview at your Lordship's earliest conve- 

 nience / 



" i h ivc the honor to he, &.C." 



And this is the answer I got from his Lord- 

 ship, which shows he was conversant of it : 



"Sir — In reply to your communication I beg to say. 

 that giving you credit for good intentions, 1 must yet de- 

 cline granting you the interview you desire, as 1 cannot 

 allow any person to interfere with me in the management 

 of my property. I am, sir, ecc. 



Kl:N.M ARE." 



"The means by which the consolidation was, 

 and is about to be, accomplished, I am well ac- 

 quainted with. In the great majority of cases no 

 law process was required. The population to be 

 evicted were told that if they gave possession 

 peaceably, and left Lord Koiiuiare's property, 

 they would get their potato gardens, and a cer- 

 tain portion of their other crops then growing 

 on their farms. They were then told, that if they 

 did not comply with these terms, law proceed- 

 ings would be commenced, and they were then 

 to expect nothing hut the heaviest vengeance of 

 Lord Kenmare and his agent. It is very well 

 ascertained that it is equal to death to the poor 

 people to be deprived of their lauds ; some of 

 them die miserably. The consequences are indeed 

 melancholy, both as regards, the persons elected, 

 and many of those who took the large farms tit 

 racl; rents. At present there are a great number 

 in a state of uncertainty, and they must give up 

 ultimately. They do not manure the land, be- 

 cause, Ihey say, if they improved it, it would be 

 doing so for other persons." 



The estate of the Earl of Kenmare iu that 

 baronry consists of 23,000 acres, on which is a 

 population of 3,400 persons; and the process of 

 ejection is still going on. * * * Similar 

 cases tire going on, or have been effected, all 

 over Ireland. 



The Review then turns to Scotland, of which 

 in an abridgment from a French author, Sis- 

 mondi, it presents the following ease : 



Since the beginning of the present century, 

 the nation of Highlanders or Gauls, the descend- 

 ants of the ancient Celts, now reduced to 340,000 

 souls, has been almost entirely expelled from its 

 home by the very persons whom it regarded as 

 its chieftains, and to whom it had shewn for so 

 many centuries an enthusiastic devotion. The 

 territory which they had cultivated from genera- 

 tion to generation, under a fixed rent, has been 

 taken from them and devoted to the pasturage of 

 flocks guided by herdsmen who were strangers ; 

 their houses and villages have been raked to the 

 ground, or destroyed lo lire, while the unhappy 

 people have been forced either lo hiiihl cabins 

 on ihe sea-shore and endeavor to maintain their 

 miserable existence by fishing, or to cross the 

 ocean to seek their fortune in the hack settle- 

 ments of America. As this revolution took 

 place in a distant and almost barbarous region, 

 of which the very language was unknown in 

 other parts of' the empire, il attracted at first but 

 little attention. But when it became known in 

 England that some of these people had waited 

 till a military force arrived to expel them from 

 their villages, and sometimes had driven away 

 ihe soldiers by a shower of stones : that they had 

 been heard lo entreat that liny might be massa- 

 cred w nli their w ives and children on the gra\ es 

 of their fathers, rather than he sent away to per- 

 ish in misery and abandonment, to a world w Inch 

 wished not to receive them, universal sympathy 

 was excited. It was reported thai ihe agent had 

 been compelled to set fire to their houses, and 



