372 READINGS IN RURAL ECONOMICS 



greater real power and responsibility. Yet even this does not 

 exhaust the special advantages and prerogatives attached to the 

 position of an English country gentleman. Until very lately, he 

 alone was lawfully eligible to a seat in Parliament, and even now 

 his class, which may be said to engross the Upper House, pre- 

 dominates conspicuously in the Lower. By this class the whole 

 machinery of county taxation, county government, and county 

 judicature is regulated and worked. In those of them who may 

 be magistrates is vested ex officio a right of taking part in poor- 

 law administration ; in their gift is a great variety of lucrative 

 county offices, and the wealthiest magnate of the greatest manu- 

 facturing town is " nobody in the county " until he shall have 

 secured their good opinion. That powers so vast and so arbitrary 

 have not been more frequently abused is an honour to our national 

 character ; nor can we reflect without some feeling of pride on 

 the admirable manner in which the " duties of property " are 

 acknowledged and discharged on thousands of English estates. 

 But this must not lead us to idealise this form of rural economy 

 as our forefathers idealised the British Constitution, to ignore 

 the grave defects and anomalies inherent in it, or lightly to 

 dismiss the experience of other nations as inapplicable to our 

 social condition. 



Ill 



The reports on land tenure drawn up for the Foreign Of- 

 fice in the years 1 869-1 870, by Her Majesty's representatives 

 in the principal countries of Europe and the United States of 

 America, contain a mine of precious materials on foreign land 

 systems. Though specially directed to points bearing directly on 

 the objects of the Irish Land Bill, they include a large mass 

 of evidence on such questions as the descent of landed property 

 on intestacy, and the general tendency of various codes to favour 

 the accumulation or dispersion of land. A few extracts from the 

 results thus obtained may be of some value in illustrating an 

 inquiry into the law and custom of primogeniture in England. 



In France, as all economists are aware, " the land is chiefly 

 occupied by small proprietors, who form the great majority 



