1158 REPORT—1885. 
We find, therefore, a fall of 54 per cent. from the price-level of the decade end- 
ing 1850, or nearly 15 per cent. from that of 1861-70. This is much less than 
people in England generally suppose, because it is the fault of Englishmen to limit 
their scope of observation to this island, when, by looking around at other nations, 
we micht be better enabled to form a correct judgment. 
It is remarkable that if we separate agricultural (including pastoral) products 
from manufactures, we find the former have risen 11 per cent., the latter fallen 25 
per cent., since 1850. The present volume of the world’s products at previous 
prices would have represented the following values :— 
Millions £ Ratio 
Years eS 
Agriculture Manufactures | Agriculture | Manufactures 
1841-50 . > 2,826 2,360 100 100 
1851-60 . ; 3,272 2,157 116 91 
1861-70 . . 3,416 2,346 121 99 
1871-80 . . i 3,293 2,186 il Wh, 92 
1881-84 . < k 8,133 Era’ 111 16) 
Therefore, fifteen shillings will now buy as much manufactures as twenty in 
the years 1841-50, but in matters of food we should require twenty-two. 
As regards the causes which led to the fall in price-level I haye nothing now to 
say, my present purpose having simply been to fix precisely the relative value of 
gold as compared with merchandise in the thirty-five years that have elapsed since 
the great discoveries of the precious metal in California and Australia. 
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 11. 
The following Papers were read :-— 
1. On the Municipalisation of the Land. 
By Sir Gzorce Campsect, K.C.S.L, MP. 
It need hardly he said that the municipalisation of the land is no new-fangled 
idea, but one of the oldest of human institutions. From the earliest times of 
which we have historical knowledge the communal tenure was universal both in 
Europe and in Asia, and in most countries it prevails to the present day, We are 
specially familiar with it in India. 
Such a tenure is by no means inconsistent with individual property ; on the 
contrary, individual possession of the arable land is one of the features of the 
system. In pastoral times tribes may have held large tracts in actual com- 
munity; but, agy soon as agriculture is introduced, there is always a partition 
for that purpose. It is true that the jealousy of inequality and unfairness 
was such that the early law of the village communes required the periodical 
redistribution of the land according to the recorded ancestral shares, but our 
experience in India is (and it is the same in Europe) that in course of time this 
also becomes obsolete; the arable land becomes permanent individual property 
subject to certain superior and reversionary rights of the community, as also do the 
sites of dwellings and the curtilages attached, while a tract of grazing and certain 
rights of wood and water, &c., remain common to the community. 
It is for want, I think, of appreciation and understanding of the true communal 
tenure that in Ireland and elsewhere it seems to be supposed'that there is an 
opposition and antagonism between what is called nationalisation of the land and 
peasant proprietorship. On the contrary, under the communal system the superior 
right of the community and the private right to individual holdings exist together, 
