TENURE OF LANDS. 17 



by the consideration that it is also a means of profitable invest- 

 ment of capital. And at this day the lands. of the kingdom are 

 divided into estates which have been growing fewer in number 

 and consequently larger in size, till some seventy-five thousand 

 persons, we are told, now own the entire landed Intercast of the 

 kingdom. This necessarily leads to three great divisions of 

 society which are arbitrary in many respects, — the nobles, the 

 gentry and the commonalty. In the first of these are the 

 princely landlords who do no labor. Tiie second may possibly 

 embrace a few of the farmers, so called, who hire the lands and 

 employ others to do the principal part of the work, while the 

 field laborer never rises above the lowest of these classes, and 

 the idea, in his mind, of owning one of the acres which he is 

 employed to hedge or plough, would seem as strange and pre- 

 posterous as the hope of marrying a scion of the royal family, 

 or being buried in St. Paul's or Westminster Abbey. 



The influence of this inequality in the condition of those who 

 do and those who do not own lands, and of those who do and those 

 who do not labor, prevails and affects every class of employment 

 in the kingdom. While only twenty-eight per cent, of the 

 people of Great Britain are connected immediately, with its 

 agriculture, the remaining seventy-two per cent, are guided, in 

 no small degree, by the opinions and will of those who head this 

 agricultural minority. It is not necessary that they should be 

 out-voted by tlicm, or that in physical strength, seven men from 

 the shop should be over-matched by two farm laborers. But 

 the possession of landed estates has become associated with 

 ancient and noble families, and though, here and there, emi- 

 nent talents, distinguished enterprise and skill may amass large 

 fortunes, and thus enable their possessors to make themselves 

 masters of greater or less quantities of land, such men are 

 rarely found content to enjoy the mere luxuries and influence 

 which wealth can purchase. There is a charmed circle above 

 them, and they are hoping, some day, to reach this when their 

 rent rolls shall have grown large enough, so that, instead of the 

 ownership of land by a commoner being a means of weakening 

 the power or influence of the class who are born to a titled 

 name, it becomes one great means by which this power is per- 

 petuated. While the farms of England and Wales average, we 

 arc told, only about sixty-four acres, the Duke of Devonshire 



3 



