Preface.

The following exposition of the necessity for Reform of the Land Laws of this Country was written in the autumn of 1877, on the suggestion of Mr. Chamberlain that a popular treatise on this subject would be useful with a view to the next General Election. It was not then published, on account of the exclusive public interest then and since excited by Foreign and Indian questions. A. spirited foreign policy, and a policy of aggrandizement and war, divert, as they are intended by their authors to divert, public attention from necessary reforms at home. The prolonged Agricultural Depression, however, has overcome this counter attraction, and has forced attention to questions affecting the Land. The necessity for change in our Land Laws is no way due to this depression. It was as urgent when the seasons were good, and the prices of produce page 6 were high. Adversity however, has brought into prominence defects in the system, and has already caused a demand for change from not a few encumbered Landowners. It has also directed public attention to the subject with an earnestness which must compel legislation of a wide character at an early date.

The following pages were wholly written before the publication of Mr. Kay's valuable letters to the Manchester Guardian, since collected in a volume entitled Free Trade in Land. Some few paragraphs which deal with the law of Entail, and with the number of Landowners in England in early times, have appeared in a paper which I read before the Social Science Association in 1877. on the subject of Entails, and in an article on English Landowners in the Fortnightly Review of the same year.