TRANSACTIONS OF THE SECTIONS. 197 
members of a family. Hence it was that, when the holding was of the nature of 
an office, the succession went to the eldest male. We should be very careful how 
we do away with office-tenure by abolishing the right of primogeniture. He much 
suspected that such a change would be more in the interests of plutocracy than of 
the people. He doubted whether it would bring us one step nearer to a wider dis- 
tribution of the land among the people, properly so called. It would free the land- 
lords from the burthens of special taxation, which were the legitimate successors of 
the service burthens of former days. In India the establishment of an ordinary law 
of property applied to land had produced mostruinous effects. Lord Cornwallis sought 
to create an Indian aristocracy by turning the land-revenue collectors into landholders, 
But the law of oo. not being carried out, the result was that in Bengal 
there was scarcely an estate that was not held by a great many holders under every 
variety of tenure, and the duties of the landlords were thrown back again on the 
Government. After an experience of seventy or eighty years, that was a difficulty 
which they had now begun most thoroughly to realize in India, and it had been 
especially realized in connexion with the recent famine. When they tried there 
to insist on the landholders doing their duty to the people and their tenants, the 
particular responsible landlord could not be got hold of, so vast was the variety of 
rights and interests, inferior and superior, on the estate. The Government had 
therefore been obliged to step in, and do the duty which it was originally supposed 
the landlord would do. If the division of property among all the children were 
made compulsory in England, he doubted whether the effect would be, on the 
whole, good. If by such means the land came to be divided generally among the 
eople at large, he would be in favour of it ; but he suspected that the more such 
and was brought into the market the more it would go to plutocrats, and as little 
as ever to the people. Moreover, people holding a divided estate, treating their 
portions as absolute property, would be far less liberal landlords than a single 
owner, would be less restrained by social bonds, and would be more likely to seek 
to make the most of their property. Under such a system, for instance, tenant-right 
in Ulster and other parts of Ireland would never have assumed the shape it has, and 
it would not have been possible or, at all events, so easy to establish it by statute 
as it has been now established. It would also be injurious in inducing younger 
sons to remain at home with less property than their fathers, as Frenchmen and 
others did. In Scotland especially it would be a great misfortune if younger sons 
had not gone out into the world to carve fortunes for themselves. There is stilla 
great deal of the aristocratic spirit in this country. As soon as a man becomes rich 
he seeks to rise into the aristocratic class. We have a great respect for lords, ladies, 
and swells. So long as this lasted he doubted whether we ought to throw away 
those duties to the public which the moral persuasion of public opinion imposes on 
the holders of great estates under the law of primogeniture. A great landlord, 
subject to the compulsion of public opinion, was likely to do more, for instance, in 
the erection of workmen's dwellings, than a man who buys property as a specula- 
tion; and he believed, as long as we treat those great landholders as office-holders, 
we may, by moral compulsion, force them to do their duty to the public, which 
they would not do if they were allowed to muddle away their estates. At the same 
time he thought a divorce of the people from all rights in the land would be the 
greatest of all evils, and would lead to revolution. He thought that, rather than 
look to any petty measures to promote the subdivision of estates, we should rather 
look to the growth of tenant-right as a legitimate mode of giving a large propor- 
tion of the people a real interest in the land; and by tenant-right he meant such a 
rivilege as would give the tenant some value in his holding, and some feeling that 
fis might improve without fear of being unfairly turned out or risk the loss of his 
property. With reference to the Irish Land Act, men in high position in Ireland 
agree that it has immensely raised the Saher of the Irish tenant; and, on the 
other hand, complaints were not heard of ruinous confiscation on the part of the 
landholders. He believed there was no doubt that property in Ireland had actually 
risen in value since the introduction of that Act; and that was a true test that the 
landlords had not been injured. They had heard that the Land Act had, in the 
_ main, been successful, and only wanted improvement in its working details. If 
honestly made the best of, and improved in a true spirit of sound legislation, he 
