ON THE THEORY OF BENT. 547 



Several of the lots purchased in one name were really acquired for 

 more than one person, and I have no doubt thfes^ lands are now held by at 

 least a hundred proprietors. ' 



These figures are illustrative of social facts which, if they develop, as 

 they seem disposed to do, are fraught with much interest and importance ; 

 and I am aware that the experience of others corroborates the tendencies 

 they indicate. 



1. The prominent feature of these figures is that the demand for land 

 as a form of investment, though materially reduced iu intensity, has 

 decidedly gi'own in extent. Here are the estates of virtually one proprietor 

 distributed at what are certainly fair prices among one hundi-ed new pro- 

 prietors. 



2. From these figures, and from many other facts, I am satisfied that 

 the desire to lay field to field, and to possess a vast extent of land, which 

 has characterised until recently the wealth of modern times, has ceased to 

 operate. This is not due to a mere reduction in value, or to the diminu- 

 tion in the attractions for sport or residence which recent legislation has 

 effected, but to a growing, though perhaps hardly recognised tendency to 

 closer and more personal relations between the occupier and the pos- 

 sessor of land. The craving for extended boundaries — the feeling 

 which the Scotch laird expressed when he desired to ' birze yont ' — 

 have given place to a soberer desire to possess more closely a narrower 

 area. 



3. Notwithstanding all the recent drawbacks, there can be no doulat 

 that land still continues to possess many attractions. The purchase of 

 land at twenty-eight years' purchase means, after deducting reasonable 

 expenses, not much over 3 or 3h per cent, on the capital invested. This 

 denotes a high appreciation of the value of the investment. 



4. But, on the other hand, the fall in the value of land relatively to 

 other investments is disguised when we compare its present price with 

 that of a few years ago. We have sold a considerable quantity of feu- 

 duties, i.e., permanent ground rents. These used invariably to sell for 

 twenty-two and twenty-three years' purchase, while land fetched thirty or 

 thirty-two years' -. we have now got twenty-five years' purchase without 

 any difiiculty for feu-duties, and often more. This, and the fall of interest 

 on all first-class securities, denote a rise in the value of these investments 

 which ought to have told on land, and would have done so in normal cir- 

 cumstances ; but in land there has been a fall and no rise, and in con- 

 trasting the present purchase price of land with that of a few years ago, 

 we must not contrast the twenty-eight years' purchase now got with the 

 thirty years' purchase formerly obtained, but with the thirty-three years' 

 purchase we would have got if land had maintained its value relatively 

 to other investments. 



.5. No small part of the land now being sold is being acquired in 

 parcels much smaller than was usual in former times. The merging in 

 one person of the separate functions of ownership and superintendence, 

 and not unfrequently of labour also, is calculated to bring the cultivator 

 into closer relation with the soil ; the dreams of some social revolutionists 

 are to some extent being realised, as such dreams often are, by the silent 

 operation of natural causes, while the dreamers are still rubbing their 

 eyes ! And this revolution is being effected under conditions widely 

 different from and much more favourable than those whic]\ characterise 

 the impoverished peasantry of some other countries, or could characterise 



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