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Property in Land.

Few questions in political economy are so extremely important to the interests of the working classes, as those relating to the tenure and division of landed property. There are few also which have been more keenly debated, or on which more widely different opinions are still entertained.

One great reason of the warmth and pertinacity with which these questions have been discussed, is that they have a most important political, as well as economical and social bearing. The main support of a hereditary aristocracy in this country is undoubtedly the laws of primogeniture and entail, which lead to the accumulation of vast estates in the hands of a few individuals; the influence derived from this source being the most solid foundation of their political power. Indeed, so closely are monarchy and aristocracy connected with primogeniture and entail, that if any one of them were removed, it is very doubtful whether the others could long maintain their ground in modern society. M. Louis Blanc remarks, in his work on the French Revolution of 1848, that Montesquieu lays it down as a political axiom, "No monarch, no nobility—no nobility, no monarch;" and also that "according to Montesquieu a monarchical government is simply impossible, if not combined with the law of primogeniture." Hence M. Louis Blanc infers that monarchy or imperialism, though temporarily existing in France, cannot long continue, as there has been no hereditary House of Peers in that country since 1789, and the law of equal division of inheritances has led to a wide distribution of the land among the people. "In France," he says, "the principle which goes on dividing property so as to pulverise the soil, leaves political hereditary power without social foundations." It is not surprising, therefore, that the advocates of aristocracy are usually at the same time the zealous defenders of primogeniture and entail; and that political partisanship, on these and other questions relating to landed property, has operated powerfully to obscure and distort the real facts of the case.

In considering this subject, it will be advisable to examine, firstly, the nature of the right of property in land and the reasons by which it can be justified; secondly, the various kinds of land page 4 tenure existing in different countries, and the comparative advantages and disadvantages of each; and thirdly, the causes which have led to the present unjust and unequal division of the land in Great Britain and Ireland, and the means by which it best admits of being remedied. These questions comprehend the principal topics relating to landed property, and those on which it is most desirable that there should be a clear understanding and agreement among reformers.

In the first place, with regard to the right of property in land, although little or no distinction is commonly made between it and the right of property in other things, it is in reality, as shown by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and after him by Mr. Mill, and others, of a very different nature, and requires a different set of reasons for its justification. The great principle upon which private property rests, consists in the right which a person has to what has been produced by his labour or saved by his abstinence. Now it is evident that this principle cannot apply to that which is not the produce of labour—namely, the raw material of the earth. This is the gift of nature, and belongs originally to the whole human race; and it would be neither just nor necessary that it should be owned by individuals, if the produce which it yields were wholly of spontaneous growth. But although the land itself is not the product of industry, most of its valuable qualities are. Not only is much labour needed to obtain each annual crop, but many improvements of a permanent kind—such as clearing the ground of wood or heath, draining bogs and marshes, irrigating meadows, putting up fences and farm-buildings, &c.—have generally to be made, before the soil becomes fit for use or can be brought to its highest fertility. No one would undertake these improvements, if he thought that other people, and not himself, would reap the benefit of them. Accordingly, a certain length of occupancy is absolutely needed, in order to hold out a sufficient motive for the improvement of the soil; and to make this motive as strong as possible, a permanent right of ownership is granted; seeing that perpetuity is a stronger stimulus to improvement, and exerts a more powerful influence on the mind, than even the longest lease. Thus, while property in other things is a part of natural justice, depending on the fact that they have been produced by human industry, property in land is wholly a matter of expediency, and is justifiable only as an inducement to, and a reward for, the improvement of the soil.

"These are the reasons," says Mr. Mill, "which form the justification in an economical point of view, of property in land. It is seen, that they are only valid in so far as the proprietor of land is its improver. Whenever, in any country, the proprietor, page 5 generally speaking, ceases to be the improver, political economy has nothing to say in defence of landed property, as there established. In no sound theory of private property, was it ever contemplated that the proprietor of land should be merely a sinecurist quartered on it."

On these grounds Mr. Mill condemns in strong terms the system of landed property, as it exists at present in this country, and more especially in Ireland. The English landlords, although not unfrequently improvers of their estates, cannot be said to be generally so; and in the majority of cases they grant leave of cultivation on such terms as to prevent any adequate improvements from being made by other people. In the southern counties, for example, it is the usual practice to grant no leases, so that these districts, in comparison with the North of England and the Lowlands of Scotland, are very badly cultivated. Moreover, even where there are leases, the hands of the tenant are often tied, and improvements prevented, by means of clauses and covenants grounded on an old and obsolete practice of agriculture. "Landed property in England," says Mr. Mill, "is thus very far from completely fulfilling the conditions which render its existence economically justifiable. But if insufficiently realised even in England, in Ireland those conditions are not complied with at all. With individual exceptions (some of them very honourable ones), the owners of Irish estates do nothing for the land but drain it of its produce. What has been epigrammatically said in the discussions on 'peculiar burthens' is literally true when applied to them; that the greatest 'burthen on land' is the landlords, Returning nothing to the soil, they consume its whole produce, minus the potatoes strictly necessary to keep the inhabitants from dying of famine; and when they have any purpose of improvement, the preparatory step usually consists in not leaving even this pittance, but turning out the people to beggary, if not to starvation.^* When landed property has placed itself on this page 6 footing, it ceases to be defensible, and the time has come for making some new arrangement of the matter."

The above considerations with regard to the nature of the right of property in land, are not merely speculative, but lead to important practical consequences. They show that landed property ought to be regarded, by its possessors as well as by the rest of society, in a different light from other kinds of property, and as carrying with it peculiar duties and responsibilities. It is, in fact, as Mr. Coleridge and Mr. Mill have pointed out, of the nature of a trust, held by the landowners, not solely for their own benefit, but also for that of the community at large. The same cannot be said of property in other things. A man who produces a commodity by his labour, does not prevent others from doing the same; his ownership is not to the exclusion of any one else, for, without him, the commodity would not have existed at all; and, as he was not bound to produce it for the benefit of other people, so neither is he bound to use it for their benefit when produced. But the proprietor of land, by the very nature of the case, excludes some one else from it; his title to the soil is not a matter of natural justice, but only of public expediency; and, therefore, he is morally, and may be legally, bound to use the land in such a manner as shall tend to the general advantage. Society is far too deeply interested in the proper cultivation of the soil, to leave this matter wholly to the discretion of the landowners, without retaining, in its own hands, a power of control over them. Accordingly Mr. Mill holds that while there should be an absolute right of property in things which are the product of labour, in land there should only be a qualified right, or, in other words, a right limited by certain conditions. "To me," he says, "it seems almost an axiom that property in land should be interpreted strictly, and that the balance in all cases of doubt should incline against the proprietors. The reverse is the case with property in moveables, and in all things the product' of labour; over these the owner's power both of use and of exclusion should be absolute, except where positive evil to others would result from it; but in the case of land, no exclusive right should be permitted in any individual, which cannot be shown to be productive of general good." Thus, although an exclusive right of cultivating the soil, and enjoying its rents and profits, is granted to the proprietors, Mr. Mill holds that they should not be allowed the sole right of access to the land, except in so far as is necessary to protect the produce from injury or their own privacy from invasion. Another very important consequence which follows from these principles is, that the state has a right of interference in the case of landed property, which it could not warrantably page 7 exercise in regard to moveable goods. Property in land has not the same inviolability, or "sacredness," as property in other things. Even if the interference of Government were carried so far as to dispossess the existing proprietors of their estates (in the same way as they are now dispossessed of a part of them when a railway bill is passed), such a measure, however impolitic, would not exceed the just powers of the state, or violate the rights of property; provided always that a full compensation were paid to the owners, either in the form of an annuity, or, if they preferred it, of the market price of their estates. "The principle of property," says Mr. Mill, "gives them no right to the land, but only a right to compensation for whatever portion of their interests in the land it may be the policy of the state to deprive them of." To such a compensation they have an indisputable claim, since the land has either been bought by themselves or inherited from those who have bought it; or, even if originally acquired by violence and injustice, is theirs now by right of prescription. Indeed, in all cases where individuals are deprived of property which they have held under the laws and sanction of the state, they are entitled to a fair compensation for it. Supposing this condition to be complied with, however, it should be clearly recognised that government has a right to deprive the landowners of a part, or even, if need be, of the whole of their estates; as;well as to make any other alterations in the laws affecting landed property, which are necessary for the happiness and well-being of the people.