Part 12

"That the king is the universal lord and original proprietor of all land in his kingdom, and that no man doth or can possess any part of it but what has mediately or immediately been derived as a gift from him to be held on feodal service."

No lawyer will assert for any English subject a higher title than tenancy-in-fee, which bears the impress of holding and denies the assertion of ownership.

The power of the nobles, the tenants-in-fee, was strengthened by an act passed in the reign of William and Mary, which altered the relation of landlord and tenant. Previous thereto, the landlord had the power of distraint, but he merely held the goods he seized to compel the tenant to perform personal service. It would be impossible for a tenant to pay his rent if his stock or implements were sold off the land. As the Tudor policy of money payments extended, the greed for pelf led to an alteration in the law, and the act of William and Mary allowed the landlord to sell the goods he had distrained. The tenant remained in possession of the land without the means of tilling it, which was opposed to public policy. This power of distraint was, however, confined to holdings in which there were leases by which the tenant covenanted to allow the landlord to distrain his stock and goods in default of payment of rent. The legislation of the Stuarts was invariably favorable to the possessor of land and adverse to the rights of the people. The government during the closing reigns was oligarchical, so much so, that William III., annoyed at the restriction put upon his kingly power, threatened to resign the crown and retire to Holland; but the aristocracy were unwilling to relax their claims, and they secured by legislation the rights they appeared to have lost by the deposition of the sovereign.

The population had increased from 5,000,000 in 1603 to 5,750,000 in 1714, being an average increase of less than 7000 per annum.

VIII. THE HOUSE OF HANOVER.

The first sovereign of the House of Hanover ascended the throne not by right of descent but by election; the legitimate heir was set aside, and a distant branch of the family was chosen, and the succession fixed by act of Parliament; but it is held by jurists that every Parliament is sovereign and has the power of repealing any act of any former Parliament. The beneficial rule of some of the latter monarchs of this family has endeared them to the people, but the doctrine of reigning by divine right, the favorite idea of the Stuarts, is nullified, when the monarch ascends the throne by statute law and not by succession or descent.

The age of chivalry passed away when the Puritans defeated the Cavaliers. The establishment of standing armies and the creation of a national debt, went to show that money, not knighthood or knight's service, gave force to law. The possession of wealth and of rent gave back to their possessors even larger powers than those wrested from them by the first Tudor king. The maxim that "what was attached to the freehold belonged to the freehold," gave the landlords even greater powers than those held by the sword, and of which they were despoiled. Though nominally forbidden to take part in the election of the representatives of the Commons, yet they virtually had the power, the creation of freehold, the substance and material of electoral right; and consequently both Houses of Parliament were essentially landlord, and the laws, for the century which succeeded the ascension of George I., are marked with the assertion of landlord right which is tenant wrong.

Among the exhibitions of this influence is an act passed in the reign of George II., which extended the power of distraint for rent, and the right to sell the goods seized--to all tenancies. Previous legislation confined this privilege solely to cases in which there were leases, wherein the tenant, by written contract, gave the landlord power to seize in case of non-payment of rent, but there was no legal authority to sell until it was given by an act passed in the reign of William III. The act of George II. presumed that there was such a contract in all cases of parole letting or tenancy-at-will, and extended the landlord's powers to such tenancies. It is an anomaly to find that in the freest country in the world such an arbitrary power is confided to individuals, or that the landlord-creditor has the precedence over all other creditors, and can, by his own act, and without either trial or evidence, issue a warrant that has all the force of the solemn judgment of a court of law; and it certainly appears unjust to seize a crop, the seed for which is due to one man, and the manure to another, and apply it to pay the rent. But landlordism, intrusted with legislative power, took effectual means to preserve its own prerogative, and the form of law was used by parliaments, in which landlord influence was paramount, to pass enactments which were enforced by the whole power of the state, and sustained individual or class rights.

The effect of this measure was most unfortunate; it encouraged the letting of lands to tenants-at-will or tenants from year to year, who could not, under existing laws, obtain the franchise or power to vote--they were not FREEMEN, they were little better than serfs. They were tillers of the soil, rent-payers who could be removed at the will of another. They were not even freeholders, and had no political power--no voice in the affairs of the nation. The landlords in Parliament gave themselves, individually by law, all the powers which a tenant gave them by contract, while they had no corresponding liability, and, therefore, it was their interest to refrain from giving leases, and to make their tenantry as dependent on them as if they were mere serfs. This law was especially unfortunate, and had a positive and very great effect upon the condition of the farming class and upon the nation, and people came to think that landlords could do as they liked with their land, and that the tenants must be creeping, humble, and servile.

An effort to remedy this evil was made in 1832, when the occupiers, if rented or rated at the small amount named, became voters. This gave the power to the holding, not to the man, and the landlord could by simple eviction deprive the man of his vote; hence the tenants-at-will were driven to the hustings like sheep--they could not, and dare not, refuse to vote as the landlord ordered.

The lords of the manor, with a landlord Parliament, asserted their claims to the commonages, and these lands belonging to the people, were gradually inclosed, and became the possession of individuals. The inclosing of commonages commenced in the reign of Queen Anne, and was continued in the reigns of all the sovereigns of the House of Hanover. The first inclosure act was passed in 1709; in the following thirty years the average number of inclosure bills was about three each year; in the following fifty years there were nearly forty each year; and in the forty years of the nineteenth century it was nearly fifty per annum.

The inclosures in each reign were as follows:

Acts. Acres. Queen Anne, 2 1,439 George I., 16 17,660 George II., 226 318,784 George III., 3446 3,500,000 George IV., 192 250,000 William IV., 72 120,000 ---- --------- Total, 3954 4,207,883

These lands belonged to the people, and might have been applied to relieve the poor. Had they been allotted in small farms, they might have been made the means of support of from 500,000 to 1,000,000 families, and they would have afforded employment and sustenance to all the poor, and thus rendered compulsory taxation under the poor-law system unnecessary; but the landlords seized on them and made the tenantry pay the poor-rate.

The British Poor Law is a slur upon its boasted civilization. The unequal distribution of land and of wealth leads to great riches and great poverty. Intense light produces deep shade. Nowhere else but in wealthy England do God's creatures die of starvation, wanting food, while others are rich beyond comparison. The soil which affords sustenance for the people is rightly charged with the cost of feeding those who lack the necessaries of life, but the same object would be better achieved in a different way. Poor-rates are now a charge upon a man's entire estate, and it would be much better for society if land to an amount equivalent to the charge were taken from the estate and assigned to the poor. If a man is charged with L100 a year poor-rate, it would make no real difference to him, while it would make a vast difference to the poor to take land to that value, put the poor to work tilling it, allowing them to enjoy the produce. Any expense should be paid direct by the landlord, which would leave the charge upon the land, and exempt the improvements of the tenant, which represent his labor, free.

The evil has intensified in magnitude, and a permanent army of paupers numbering at the minimum 829,281 persons, but increasing at some periods to upward of 1,000,000, has to be provided for; the cost, about L8,000,000 a year, is paid, not by landlords but by tenants, in addition to the various charities founded by benevolent persons. There are two classes relieved under this system, and which ought to be differently dealt with--the sick and the young. Hospitals for the former and schools for the latter ought to take the place of the workhouse. It is difficult to fancy a worse place for educating the young than the workhouse, and it would tend to lessen the evil were the children of the poor trained and educated in separate establishments from those for the reception of paupers. Pauperism is the concomitant of large holdings of land and insecurity of tenure. The necessity of such a provision arose, as I have previously shown, from the wholesale eviction of large numbers of the occupiers of land; and, as the means of supplying the need came from the LAND, the expense should, like tithes, have fallen exclusively upon land. The poor-rates are, however, also levied upon houses and buildings, which represent labor. The owner of land is the people, as represented by the Crown, and the charges thereon next in succession to the claims of the state are the church and the poor.

The Continental wars at the close of the eighteenth and the commencement of the nineteenth century had some effect upon the system of tillage; they materially enhanced the price of agricultural produce--rents were raised, and the national debt was contracted, which remains a burden on the nation.

The most important change, however, arose from scientific and mechanical discoveries--the application of heat to the production of motive power. As long as water, which is a non-exhaustive source of motion, was used, the people were scattered over the land; or if segregation took place, it was in the neighborhood of running streams. The application of steam to the propulsion of machinery, and the discovery of engines capable of competing with the human hand, led to the substitution of machine-made fabrics for clothing, in place of homespun articles of domestic manufacture. This led to the employment of farm-laborers in procuring coals, to the removal of many from the rural into the urban districts, to the destruction of the principal employment of the family during the winter evenings, and consequently effected a great revolution in the social system. Many small freeholds were sold, the owners thinking they could more rapidly acquire wealth by using the money representing their occupancy, in trade. Thus the large estates became larger, and the smaller ones were absorbed, while the appearance of greater wealth from exchanging subterranean substances for money, or its representative, gave rise to ostentatious display. The rural population gradually diminished, while the civic population increased. The effect upon the system of landholding was triplicate. First, there was a diminution in the amount of labor applicable to the cultivation of land; second, there was a decrease in the amount of manure applied to the production of food; and lastly, there was an increase in the demand for land as a source of investment, by those who, having made money in trade, sought that social position which follows the possession of broad acres. Thus the descendants of the feudal aristocracy were pushed aside by the modern plutocracy.

This state of things had a double effect. Food is the result of two essential ingredients--land and labor. The diminution in the amount of labor applied to the soil, consequent upon the removal of the laborers from the land, lessened the quantity of food; while the consumption of that food in cities and towns, and the waste of the fertile ingredients which should be restored to the soil, tended to exhaust the land, and led to vast importations of foreign and the manufacture of mineral manures. I shall not detain you by a discussion of this aspect of the question, which is of very great moment, consequent upon the removal of large numbers of people from rural to urban districts; but I may be excused in saying that agricultural chemistry shows that the soil--"perpetual man"--contains the ingredients needful to support human life, and feeding those animals meant for man's use. These ingredients are seized upon by the roots of plants and converted into aliment. If they are consumed where grown, and the refuse restored to the soil, its fertility is preserved; nay, more, the effect of tillage is to increase its productive power. It is impossible to exhaust land, no matter how heavy the crops that are grown, if the produce is, after consumption, restored to the soil. I have shown you how, in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, a man was not allowed to sell meat off his land unless he brought to, and consumed on it, the same weight of other meat. This was true agricultural and chemical economy. But when the people were removed from country to town, when the produce grown in the former was consumed in the latter, and the refuse which contained the elements of fertility was not restored to the soil, but swept away by the river, a process of exhaustion took place, which has been met in degree by the use of imported and artificial manures. The sewage question is taken up mainly with reference to the health of towns, but it deserves consideration in another aspect--its influence upon the production of food in the nation.

An exhaustive process upon the fertility of the globe has been set on foot. The accumulations of vegetable mould in the primeval forests have been converted into grain, and sent to England, leaving permanent barrenness in what should be prolific plains; and the deposits of the Chincha and Ichaboe Islands have been imported in myriads of tons, to replace in our own land the resources of which it is bereft by the civic consumption of rural produce.

These conjoined operations were accelerated by the alteration in the British corn laws in 1846, which placed the English farmer, who tried to preserve his land in a state of fertility, in competition with foreign grain--growers, who, having access to boundless fields of virgin soil, grow grain year after year until, having exhausted the fertile element, they leave it in a barren condition, and resort to other parts. A competition under such circumstances resembles that of two men of equal income, one of who appears wealthy by spending a portion of his capital, the other parsimonious by living within his means. Of course, the latter has to debar himself of many enjoyments. The British farmer has lessened the produce of grain, and consequently of meat; and the nation has become dependent upon foreigners for meat, cheese, and butter, as well as for bread.

This is hardly the place to discuss a question of agriculture, but scientific farmers know that there is a rotation of crops, [Footnote: The agricultural returns of the United Kingdom show that 50 and 1/2 per cent of the arable land was under pasture, 24 per cent under grain, 12 per cent under green crops and bare fallow, and 13 per cent under clover. The rotation would, therefore, be somewhat in this fashion: Nearly one fourth of the land in tillage is under a manured crop or fallow, one fourth under wheat, one fourth under clover, and one fourth under barley, oats, etc., the succession being, first year, the manured crop; next year, wheat; third year, clover; fourth, barley or oats; and so on.] and that as one is diminished the others lessen. The quantity under tillage is a multiple of the area under grain. A diminution in corn is followed by a decrease of the extent under turnips and under clover; the former directly affects man, the latter the meat-affording animals. A decrease in the breadth under tillage means an addition to the pasture land, which in this climate only produces meat during the warm portions of the year. I must, however, not dwell upon this topic, but whatever leads to a diminution in the labor applied to the land lessens the production of food, and DEAR MEAT may only be the supplement to CHEAP CORN.

I shall probably be met with the hackneyed cry, The question is entirely one of price. Each farmer and each landlord will ask himself, Does it pay to grow grain? and in reply to any such inquiry, I would refer to the annual returns. I find that in the five years, 1842 to 1846, wheat ranged from 50s. 2d. to 57s. 9d.; the average for the entire period being 54s. 10d. per quarter. In the five years from 1870 to 1874 it ranged from 46s. 10d. to 58s. 8d., the average for the five years being 54s. 7d. per quarter. The reduction in price has only been 3d. per quarter, or less than one half per cent.

I venture to think that there are higher considerations than mere profit to individuals, and that, as the lands belong to the whole state as represented by the Crown, and as they are held in trust TO PRODUCE FOOD FOR THE PEOPLE, that trust should be enforced.

The average consumption of grain by each person is about a quarter (eight bushels) per annum. In 1841 the population of the United Kingdom was 27,036,450. The average import of foreign grain was about 3,000,000 quarters, therefore TWENTY-FOUR MILLIONS were fed on the domestic produce. In 1871 the population was 31,513,412, and the average importation of grain 20,000,000 quarters; therefore only ELEVEN AND A HALF MILLIONS were supported by home produce. Here we are met with the startling fact that our own soil is not now supplying grain to even one half the number of people to whom it gave bread in 1841. This is a serious aspect of the question, and one that should lead to examination, whether the development of the system of landholding, the absorptions of small farms and the creation of large ones, is really beneficial to the state, or tends to increase the supply of food. The area under grain in England in 1874 was 8,021,077. In 1696 it was 10,000,000 acres, the diminution having been 2,000,000 acres. The average yield would probably be FOUR QUARTERS PER ACRE, and therefore the decrease amounted to the enormous quantity of EIGHT MILLION QUARTERS, worth L25,000,000, which had to be imported from other countries, to fill up the void, and feed 8,000,000 of the population; and if a war took place, England may, like Rome, be starved into peace.

An idea prevails that a diminution in the extent under grain implies an increase in the production of meat. The best answer to that fallacy lies in the great increase in the price of meat. If the supply had increased the price would fall, but the converse has taken place. A comparison of the figures given by Geoffrey King, in the reign of William III., with those supplied by the Board of Trade in the reign of Queen Victoria, illustrates this phase of the landholding question, and shows whether the "enlightened policy" of the nineteenth century tends to encourage the fulfilment of the trust which applies to land--THE PRODUCTION OF FOOD.

The land of England and Wales in 1696 and 1874 was classified as follows:

1696. 1874. Acres. Acres. Under grain, 10,000,000 8,021,077 Pastures and meadows, 10,000,000 12,071,791 Flax, hemp, and madder, 1,000,000 --------- Green crops, --------- 2,895,138 Bare fallow, --------- 639,519 Clover --------- 2,983,733 Orchards, 1,000,000 148,526 Woods, coppices, etc, 3,000,000 1,552,598 Forests, parks, and commons, 3,000,000| Moors, mountains, and bare land, 10,000,000|- 9,006,839 Waste, water, and road, 1,000,000| ----------- ----------- 39,000,000 37,319,231