548 REPOBT— 1887. 



the subsidised serfs of a landowning community ; but just because these 

 small estates are small, an element of value is brought into play which is 

 generally left out of view in larger transactions — the residence, which, 

 on the large estate, is a mere appliance of the farm, and part of its 

 machinery, becomes on these separate estates a distinct and important 

 element of value. 



6. In the same direction there is, I think, discernible a growing taste 

 for large and fine residences, with a large domain within the walls, 

 without any or with very little agricultural land beyond ; the clashing of 

 feeling and interest engendered of recent years by agitation on the one 

 side and excessive preservation of game on the other has diminished the 

 taste for large estates. I do not think this change of taste, if it develops, 

 is to be welcomed ; the exclusiveness of the French chateau or the 

 German scJiloss, with their walled preserves and their dilettante sport, 

 and their sharp distinction of caste, will be a poor substitute for the 

 open sporting life of our fathers with its generous freedom of intercourse 

 among all classes, though it may be the natural progeny of the more 

 recent battue. But the social economist can onlj'- note what he sees ; 

 preferences are seductive. 



Lastly. — The great bane of modern landowning has been of late 

 brought into painful relief — debt. We are very fond of putting our 

 forefathers to shame, and blaming settlement and entail for many evils ; 

 if the emancipation of land from settlement is to be contemporaneous 

 with its thraldom to debt, it will be out of the frying-pan into the fire. 

 "Welcoming, as I do, the enlightened legislation embodied in the Settled 

 Estates Acts passed by Lord Cairns and others, and introduced by Lord 

 Halsbnry, and feeling more and more convinced that every proprietor 

 ought to be an unfettered owner, I cannot forget that the motive of 

 entail and settlement was to preserve land from the incubus of debt ; and 

 the habit that has within the last century been engendered, not so much 

 among the old aristocracy as among the modern commercial landowners, 

 of holding large tracts of land virtually in trust for a large army of 

 mortgagees, is one of deeper danger to the owners of land and of greater 

 injury to the community than the older system of settlement and entail, 

 and the still more ancient principle of primogeniture which, it appears, 

 we are going to supersede. 



What, then, are the practical conclusions to which this cursory 

 survey of the relation of recent experience to theory would lead us ? 



First. — We are undergoing a process of transition — the old order is 

 passing away — and what the new order is to be is not yet discernible ; 

 many of the serious and painful evils from which we suffer are due to 

 that uprooting which must precede replanting. 



Second. — One of the most valuable lessons we can deduce from the 

 present condition is to learn the impotence of legislation and of all 

 artificial resources to withstand the power of natural causes. Nothing 

 more markedly illustrates this than the effect of the repeal of the Corn 

 Laws. That step was urged in order to reduce the price of corn, and 

 necessarily rents. It had no meaning if that was not its purpose, and all 

 the afterthought that has striven to disguise the sense of what was said 

 and written in and before 1846, however much it may satisfy sectarian 

 vanity, must be dismissed as unworthy trifling by every honest thinker. 

 Of those who initiated the legislation of 1846 the aim and purpose 

 was the fall of price, and what they thus intended to efiect had, as its 



