against all the world. The proceeds of the sale are paid into the Court of Chancery, to be distributed by that court, as equity may require, between the owner, his creditors, the va rious encumbrancers, the heirs at law, and all other interested parties. Thus the process was an easy and simple one; the legal burdens were all taken off the land, and applied only to the money which was received from the sale of it, the estate itself being sold to the greatest possible advantage, because free from all encumbrance, resting upon the best of all titles, a parliamentary one, and being divided into such portions as would best suit the convenience of the purchasers. Before this act was passed, the mortgages and other burdens covering the whole property equally, and even rendering, through their complication, the title to it very doubtful, it was impossible to sell a portion of the property; it could only be disposed of as a whole, and with a title so uncertain, and law expenses so heavy, that it would bring but a small part of its real value.

The proceedings under this statute afford curious evidence of the extent to which real property in Ireland had become encumbered. Up to October, 1854, upwards of two millions of acres had changed hands under the authority of this commission; it had sold 1,152 estates to 5,613 purchasers, for £13,509,303. Of these estates, 364 had been in Chancery over five years, 167 over ten years, 17 over thirty-five years, and 9 over fifty years. In about five years, more than one tenth of all the landed property in the island had passed through the hands of this commission. How much more is to undergo the same process, it is impossible to tell; but the proceedings have been delayed, in order to avoid crowding so much land upon the market at once as to depress the price. One of the most significant facts that appear from these returns is, that the land sold has been divided into about five times as many distinct estates as before. The amount of the encumbrances was such, that only a small portion of the proceeds of the sale of the property remained for the benefit of its former nominal owners.

I have entered into this detailed account of the state of landed property in Great Britain and Ireland, as affected by the tenure of land and by the laws regulating the succession to the estates of persons deceased, because it seems to me to

afford almost a complete explanation of those striking peculiarities in the social and economical condition of the people of that country, by which they are distinguished from all other nations, and which have suggested those theories in political economy that affect the whole aspect of the science as it is taught by the English authorities upon the subject. Such theories as those of Malthus upon population, Ricardo upon rent and profits, Adam Smith upon free trade, and McCulloch upon this very matter of the succession to property, must have originated from experience in an anomalous state of society, from observation of the laws of wealth as exemplified in their operation under very peculiar circumstances. Any refutation of them would be insufficient which did not point out the phenomena by which they were suggested, and offer some expla nation of these phenomena which should be consistent with general principles and facts of universal experience.

The avowed objects of the English laws which regulate the descent of property are, the concentration of wealth in the hands of a few, and the support of an hereditary territorial aristocracy. These ends have been obtained. The inequality in the distribution of wealth in England is greater than in any other civilized nation; and her nobility and gentry are wealthier, more intelligent, more highly cultivated, more influential, and more secure in the possession of their power and property, than the corresponding classes now existing, or that ever have existed, in any country in the world. Five noblemen, the Marquis of Breadalbane, the Dukes of Argyle, Athol, Sutherland, and Buccleuch, own perhaps one fourth of all Scotland.* I have already quoted the assertion of M. de Lavergne, that 2,000 proprietors possess among them one third of the land

*The estate of the Duke of Sutherland comprises about 700,000 acres, or considerably more than 1,000 square miles. The domains of the Marquis of Breadalbane, says M. de Lavergne, "extend one hundred English miles, or forty leagues, in length, and reach nearly from sea to sea." Both of these immense estates have been cleared of their ancient inhabitants, and the Highland clans by which they were not only occupied, but owned, have ceased, properly speaking, to exist; they have been driven into exile, or have been exterminated by privation and hardships. A few remnants of them inhabit some miserable fishing hamlets on the sea-shore, and swell the bulk of the destitute classes in the great cities. "By far the wealthiest proprietor in the Lowlands is the Duke of Buccleuch," whose estates extend over several counties, and whose palace at Dalkeith is an establishment of regal magnificence.

and total revenue of the three kingdoms of England, Scotland, and Ireland. It is admitted that, up to 1848, there were not more than 5,000 Scotch, and 8,000 Irish land-owners; and good reasons have been adduced (page 195) for the opinion, that there are only 46,000 who should be classed as landed proprietors in England. About 60,000 families, then, own all the territory which is occupied by over 27 millions of inhabitants.

In France, on the other hand, under the laws requiring the equal partition of the property of persons deceased, the aristocracy have virtually ceased to exist, and out of a population of about thirty-five millions, at least five and a half millions are landholders. Considering these as heads of families, and allowing on an average four persons to a family, we find that twenty-two millions, or nearly two thirds of the whole population, are owners of the soil. Making the same allowance for the families of British landholders, we have but 240,000 individuals, or about the 112th part of the people, who share among them the total rental of the United Kingdom, which amounts to more than sixty millions sterling. In France, it is estimated that there are two and a half millions of proprietors whose estates do not exceed an average of ten acres each, and three millions of others whose properties average about thirty

acres.

These results of a comparison of the two countries in respect to the distribution of landed property are very startling, and would almost exceed belief, if it were not evident that the policy of the law so strongly favors aggregation in the one case, and partition in the other, that such consequences, sooner or later, are inevitable. A race of husbandmen living on their own small properties, and constituting what was called the yeomanry of the land, were formerly the principal cultivators in England and Wales. The larger portion of the population were then engaged in tilling the ground, which then produced more than enough for the national consumption, and there were no complaints that the country was over-peopled. the race of small proprietors is now extinct; large estates and large farms have absorbed the small ones, and the agriculturists, who were once two thirds, now form but one fifth, of the whole population. The doctrine of the dominant school of

But

English economists is, that farming must be carried on like every other trade; that large farms, like large machine-shops, large cotton-mills, and large iron-works, can produce cheaper than small ones, and therefore, very properly, supersede and obliterate them. Whatever may be thought of the correctness of this doctrine, it has certainly been carried out in practice. According to the census of 1851, there are in Great Britain, 1,132 farms containing each 1,000 acres and upwards, and 2,816 others which are over 600 acres in extent. There are

but 190,573 farms of less than 100 acres each, while in France, as we have just seen, there are two and a half millions which do not exceed ten acres.

The chief argument in favor of this "monster-farm" system is, that it economizes labor, and admits the application of capital on a large scale, so that machinery can take the place of human beings, great operations in draining and manuring can be effected, and the most improved processes of agriculture can be carried out in their full perfection. It may be so, if by rent we understand only that portion of the produce which accrues to the exclusive benefit of the landlord. In many cases, his estate will give him a larger income if devoted to pasturage than to tillage; for in the former case, only a few herdsmen are required to perform all the labor that is needed on a thousand acres. But it does not produce so much food; it does not afford sustenance to so many people. He who turns his land into a sheep-pasture or a deer-park, acts on the same principle as the Dutch, when, having a monopoly of the trade in spices, they destroyed a portion of what they imported in order to enhance the price of the remainder. It behooves the landholders who reason in this manner to ask themselves, if they do not lose as much by the increased cost of pauperism as they may possibly gain by the enhancement of their rents. In England alone, the amount levied for the poor rate in 1850 exceeded seven and a quarter millions sterling (about $36,000,000); the average number of paupers receiving relief on any one day was almost exactly one million; and the whole number of different persons relieved during some part of the year, was three millions.*

* Pashley on Pauperism and the Poor Laws, (London, 1852,) pp. 8–12.

The proper object of all cultivation is to increase the quantity of the marketable produce of the land, and this is what the interest of the community, especially in such a country as England, requires; the object of the land-owner who does not till the ground himself, but lets it out to others, is to reserve as much as possible of this produce for himself. He may often obtain a greater net return by diminishing the gross amount of produce. If fifty laborers upon his estate, for instance, will enable him to send 1,000 bushels of grain to market, the price of 800 bushels being needed to pay the wages of these laborers; while ten laborers will produce 500 bushels for sale, and require only 160 bushels for wages; his rent in the former case will be only 200, while in the latter it will amount to 340 bushels. It is for his interest, then, to employ the smaller number of laborers, and thereby to produce the smaller quantity of food, especially since the inadequate supply in the market will then enhance the price of the grain. It may be, that 500 will sell for as much as could, under the other supposition, be obtained for 1,000 bushels. But it is certainly not for the interest of the public, in a country teeming with population and deficient in the supply of food, that he should adopt this course. Here is another instance, then, of the fallacy of the often quoted maxim, that individual and national interests are identical. Only half a century ago, the most profitable use which the farmers of Ohio and Western Pennsylvania could make of their grain was to distil it into whiskey; for in this highly concentrated form alone would it bear the expense of transportation to the eastward. The interests of the individual here prompted him to deprive the grain of its nutritious properties and convert it into a poison; the interests of the public required a very different proceeding.

That a larger gross product of food may be obtained from the land when it is divided into small properties than when it is held in large farms, is a fact which no English traveller on the Continent can think of disputing. "In Flanders," says Mr. Laing, "the face of the country resembles a carpet, little patches of gound being covered with a great variety of crops of different shades and hues, not separated from each other by enclosures, and all blooming like a garden from the care and skill of the cultivator. Not a bit of ground is allowed to run