Free land

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Contents

CHAPTES TAGS

II. Who are the Landlords? ... ... ... 14

III. How THE Land passes to Limited Landowners ... 29

Chapter I. Who Has The Land?

In the " New Domesday Books " prepared in 1874-75, at the instance of the fifteenth Earl of Derby, by the Government of which he was at that time a distinguished member, we find 625 persons returned as owners of one-fifth of the area of the United Kingdom. These are the nobles, and with few exceptions, they are peers of Parliament. They have each, on an average, three landed estates. The number in the several grades of nobility, the number, acreage, and annual value of their estates, are set out in the following table : —

Separate Landed Estates.

Acres.

Estimated Bental.

Dnkes 28

158 121 634 120 560

£2,357,655

1,383,671

5,007,119

644,771

3,135,852

MarquiseB 33

Earls 194

VisoountB 52

Barons 218

*

15,303,165

£12,529,068

B

But this is an imperfect representation of the facts. From the list of nobility, peeresses are excluded ; from the acreage, not only all forest lands and all woods (except saleable underwoods), but also the building estates within the metropolitan area, are omitted. Many lands held by trustees are not included, and as to the estimated rental, it is too low by at least a fourth, perhaps by a third, of the above sum. To some extent, this may be seen by observing that the estimated rental of the metropolis (now about £25,000,000) is not less than one-fourth of that of the United Kingdom, outside the metropolitan area, which, in the " New Domesday Books," is returned at £99,352,303. It may be added that the rental is in many places inaccurate with regard to Irish property, the return being based upon a valuation said to be 25 per cent, below the actual value, although it is unquestionably true that in Ireland some landlords have not raised their rents since the time of that valuation. In this return, no account is taken of the vast extent of common and waste lands, so large a part of which is claimed, and upon enclosure would certainly be allotted to these 525 nobles ; nor is the area of any lands included which are not rateable for the relief of the poor. Their properties in roads and rivers, as weU as in forests and in aU timber-growing woods, in gas-works and water-works, in markets, bridges, docks, harbours, and canals, — ^are all excluded. I am sure I shall not greatly err if I assert that the property of the nobles amounts nearly to one-fourth of the extent and to one-eighth of the estimated rental of the United Kingdom.

No statement so remarkable can be made with regard to the distribution of land in this country. There are other classes, but there is no class so small in number ; the nobles are much fewer even than the elected representatives of the people. Yet there is no class which possesses an area of land within the United Kingdom comparable in extent or value to the estates belonging to the nobility.

Before we pass on to consider the possessions of other categories of landowners we may learn from the enumeration of the nobility how untrustworthy are the " New Domesday Books" in regard to the number of landowners. I am probably well within the truth in saying that the 525 nobles are in these books made into more than 1500 landowners. And this is how it is done. The Duke of Buccleuch, who has perhaps the largest income from landed property outside London, is also distinguished as possessing estates in a larger number of counties than any other subject of the Queen. His Grace is reckoned as 14 landowners in respect of the following properties : —

Acres.

CoTinty of Buckingham

Huntinsrdon

17,965

253,514

104,461

60,428

2769 1312

.. Lancaster

NorthamDton

26,532

M SuiTCV

.. Warwick

12,568

.. Dnnifiries

97,530

28,409

Cdinburfirh.

Fife

•. Kirkcudbri&rht

„ Lanark

Peebles

,, Boxbnrgh

Selkirk

39,458 19,828

459,530

231,494

I have set out the case of the Duke of Buccleuch as an example of the miscalculation of the number of landowners. He is returned as 14 landowners. There are 4 peers who are returned as 44 landowners, because these noblemen — ^the Dukes of Devonshire and Cleveland, the Earl Howe and Lord Overstone — each appear in the lists of 11 counties. Thus we have 5 persons returned in the " New Domesday Books " as 58 landowners ; and if we include the Duke of Bedford, who has land in 10 counties, we may say 6 peers returned as 68 landowners. But errors of this sort do not affect merely the grand total of landowners, they vitiate all calculations based upon the plain record of these books in regard to the several classes of landowners. We may see this by a further reference to the case of the Duke of Buccleuch. In 4 counties, he stands for as many great landowners. He is returned in each as the owner of more than 10,000 acres. In 2 counties, he stands for as many owners of the second class. He is returned in each of these 2 counties as possessing more than 5000 and less than 10,000 acres. In 3 counties, he stands for as many owners of the third class, for in these he has property varying in extent from 1000 to 5000 acres. Again, in 1 county, he figures as a landowner of the fourth class, in respect of an estate exceeding 500 acres and less than 1000 acres. Yet once more, he is returned in 2 counties as two landowners of the fifth class, for in these he has property exceeding 100 and less than 500 acres. Finally, his Grace is counted as two in the number of the supposed yeomen landowners on accoimt of his property of 8 acres in Surrey; which is evidently building land, and for his 60 acres in Fifeshire.

From this, which is undeniably a fair example, we may judge how fallacious are the general statements of the " New Domesday Books."

Below the peerage in rank, but superior in numbers, and hardly inferior in possessions and influence, are the lesser landed gentry, who, together with the nobility, are owners of about four-fifths of the soil of the country. It is not very easy, owing to the errors I have exposed, which are common throughout all ranks of the landed gentry, to form a trustworthy estimate of their number. But the "New Domesday Books" afford a necessary basis for calculation, and from those volumes I have compiled the following figures, which show the number of owners of 1,000 acres and upwards in the three divisions of the United Kingdom :—

Owners of 1000 Acres and upwards.

Total Extent in Acres.

En&:land and Wales

5408 1758 3745

Scotland

10,911

52,083,095

The total acreage of the United Kingdom (exclusive of the metropolis) as given in the " New Domesday Books," is 72,117,766, of which four-fifths would not much exceed the reported aggregate possessions of 10,911 owners. But we know from what has been now stated as to omissions which are acknowledged by the official compilers of these books, that the acreage is much more than this, and from what we have seen in the case of the b FBEE LAND.

peerage, we know that the number of owners is vastly overstated. If all the landed gentry, whom we have taken to be those possessing 1,000 acres and upwards, have been computed at the rate of 3 to 1, which we may say is the average multiplication of the peers into landowners, then we might conclude that four-fifths of the soil of the United Kingdom are in the possession of fewer than 4,000 persons. And it may be said that this would be a reasonable calculation. We should be amply justified in deducting nearly 1,000 for error in regard to the peerage alone. But it is certain that the same rate of error would not be found in the case of the lesser gentry, whose properties are not as a rule scattered in several counties. We can, however, form a confident opinion that the number of owners of four-fifths of the soil must be much fewer than 10,000, and that probably the true number approaches more nearly to 6,000.

Thus we arrive at the astonishing result that the representative owners of four-fifths of the soil of the United Kingdom could be placed within the compass of a single voice in one of the great public halls of the country. The landlords of more than 52,000,000 of acres might meet together in the Free Trade Hall of Manchester, and discuss the accuracy of these statements. Of this compact body of perhaps about 7,000 gentlemen, the House of Lords is strictly representative. With the exception of the Bench of Bishops, who may be said to represent the lands of the Church — an extensive property including 496,046 acres of some of the best and most highly rented land in England and Wales,*

• "Social Politics," by Arthur Arnold, p. 38.

WHO HAS THE LAND?

— and of the Law Lords who, by their failures in regard to reform have faithfully represented the legal system by which this aggregation of property is unnaturally maintained — that House is composed of about 500 of the largest landowners. The fundamental principle of the House of Lords is the representation of the distribution of land peculiar to Great Britain and Ireland, If that House now and then annexes a successful lawyer, or statesman, or soldier, he, as a rule, endeavours to justify the ennobling of his family by providing his less distinguished heir with the proper territorial qualification.

Seeing, then, that -four-fifths of Great Britain and Ireland are in the hands of some 7,000 persons, there remains but a comparatively smaU portion, the ownership of which we have yet to consider. In the " New Domesday Books," the total area dealt with is 72,117,766 acres. I have shown what is the ownership of 52,083,095 of these acres. Over that immense area, the smallest estate is not less than 1,000 acres. The remnant of the land, belonging to the rest of the population, that is to 31,506,442 out of 31,513,442 of people, is therefore 20,034,671 acres. Rejecting the parcels described as being less than one acre, the area is reduced to 19,543,638 acres, which, according to the " New Domesday Books," are distributed as follow : —

.

No. of Owners.

Estimated Acreage.

England and Wales

257,578 17,346 28,822

Scotland

303,746

19,843,638

FBEE LAND.

The respective areas of ownership are as follow : —

Acres.

No. of Owuers.

Estimated Acreage.

500 and less than 1000

100 „ „ 500

50 „ „ 100

10 „ „ 50

1 ,, „ 10

42,673

30,531

83,855

138,346

303,746

19,843,638

These figures with regard to the owners of 1 acre and less than 1000 acres are not, I regret to say, more trustworthy than those relating to ownership of 1000 acres and upwards. To revert to the case of the Duke of Buccleuch, we see on referring to the schedule of his estates, that his Grace makes a five-fold appearance in this supposed category of commonalty ; and his case is typical of that of the nobility generally. But there are much larger errors than this. In the " explanatory statement," or preface to the " New Domesday Books," we are warned that "where the owners appear to be corporate bodies, or to hold their lands in virtue of a public office, the names are printed in italics ; but the return must not be assumed to be complete in this respect, as there is reason to believe that in many cases the name of an individual is entered instead of the body or office which he represents, and this remark applies especially to glebe lands." It might be supposed from this that the manifest error with reference to glebe lands is of trifling extent. But in reality it amounts to thousands. There are probably more than 10,000 parcels of glebe land in the 15,000 parishes of England and

Wales. No one connected with the work of compiling this return can have been so ignorant of the facts as to suppose that in the county of Buckingham there are no more than five parcels of glebe land ; that there are only three in the county of Hertford, and only seven in the county of Lancaster. But this is exactly what the italics in the lists of those three counties proclaim to be the fact. Of course there is a very large error in the statement, one which needed a much bolder allusion than that given in the " explanatory statement." I have taken the trouble to go carefully through the return of " landowners " for those three counties, and I find that in Bucks there are no fewer than 235 with the title of "Reverend;" that in Hertford there are 159 "landowners " with the same prefix, and that in Lancaster the number of " reverend landowners " is not less than 286. It is certain that, with very few exceptions, these " reverend landowners " are merely in official possession of Church property, and their names ought therefore to have been placed in italics. I selected those three counties for no other reason than because the three chiefs of the Government by which the return was issued reside in those shires. The error is, however, as wide as the kingdom.

But upon a fair showing of the tenure of public lands by printing in italics, the names so distinguished should not have been counted in the lists of persons returned as landowners. The object of printing these names initalics was to separate them from the landowners. Yet the names printed in italics are included by thousands in the above total of 303,746 "landowners." We have seen that in three counties between 600 and 700 holders of glebe lands are wrongly thrown into the total. We may judge of the mass of errors by this discovery, and by the following samples. In the list for the county of Norfolk, " churchwardens," are enumerated as 136 landowners ; in Essex, " churchwardens " are counted as 55 landowners. In the same county, the Gaslight and Coke Company stands for 3 landowners. The North Western Railway Company is returned as 28 landowners. "Trustees of Poor" figure as 40 landowners in the single county of Bucks. " Colleges " sweU the total in the county of Cambridge by 22 ; and " Charity " stands in the same county as 73 landowners. Errors of such magnitude, affecting the total by tens of thousands, might have been avoided by a more careful and intelligent compilation. But with every deduction made in respect of public lands, the remainder is very far indeed from presenting a true return of the ownership of agricultural land.

Excluding the owners of less than an acre, the number returned as owning more than 1 acre and less than 1000 acres, form 95.5 per cent, of the total of landowners in England and Wales; 90 per cent, in Scotland, and 88 per cent, in Ireland. From this, a foreigner might suppose that small holdings or peasant properties were numerous in England.

Why is the percentage of the inferior of our two classes of landed properties higher with regard to England and Scotland ? It is obviously because in the manufacturing island the more opulent of the population, especially in the neighbourhood of the large towns, become owners, or lessees (a condition which, if the term be not less than 99 years, is counted as ownership in the return), of a few acres of land which are occupied in a pleasurable, rather than a productive manner. The number of owners of this sort throughout England and Scotland is legion. They are not agricultural owners; their land is bestowed in lawns, in gardens, in shrubberies, in paddocks, producing nothing but perhaps a portion of the fodder required for saddle and carriage horses, and every one of such owners appears in the totals last placed in tabular form.

No ojSScial calculation has been made concerning the number of owners of agricultural land in the United Kingdom. WitK no guide, except the certainty that the totals set out in the " New Domesday Books " are untrustworthy, I will not attempt to frame any precise estimate. We have seen what very large deductions must be made from these tabulated totals in order to approach a true statement. There are the holders of glebe imported by hundreds in each county to which our attention has been directed ; there are the thousands of parcels of public lands to be deducted; there are other thousands of repetitions of the same owners in several counties ; and then there are the vast number of suburban and other residential owners, whose property has no truly agricultural character. But the most careful study of the facts and figures leads me to believe that the number of agricultural landowners in the United Kingdom falls far short of 100,000.

I have now set forth a few incontestable facts in reply to the question, "Who has the land?" I shall proceed to oflfer other facts showing how the existing distribution of the soil of the country has been effected and how it is maintained; how the laws and customs which have led to this distribution operate to diminish the value of the landlord's interest in his possessions, and to restrict agricultural production and improvement. The argument of this book will be directed to securing the freedom of the soil; that is, its freedom from the operation of those laws and customs which, with injury to every class in the country, maintain an unnatural and injurious distribution of the land. No objection will be taken in these pages to the extent of the possessions of any man, or of any order or class in the United Kingdom. No one recognizes more thoroughly than the writer, the advantage of placing the heads of the families which own one-fifth of the country in a House of Lords. No one is more profoundly convinced that in the United Kingdom, as it is, there is no basis for a Second Chamber possessing anything comparable to the representative power and ability of the great landowners. The object of the author is to make the ownership of land accord with the free operation of economic laws. At present, there are three gentlemen in the United Kingdom, one in each of the three divisions, whose united possessions amount to nearly 2,000,000 acres of land. I have no objection to such a distribution of the soil if it should result from the action of laws which are most beneficial alike to the interests of proprietors and to those of the community. I shall show that the existing laws and customs have not that character ; that they tend to reduce the value of the landlord's property and to increase the dependence of the United Kingdom upon foreign supplies of food. I shall make it plain that what is understood by " free land " is at present most nearly expressed in our land system by the well-known term "freehold;" that our great need is to put the land of this country, to the largest possible extent, in that condition of " freehold," and to make the title to land and the transfer of land, as far as may be, conspicuous and attractive by simplicity, economy, and security. Further, it will be necessary to give close attention to the peculiar character of land as saleable property, having regard to the fact that while land is one of the indispensable necessaries of life, the security of property in land is absolutely essential to the interests of production and to the welfare of the people.

CHAPTER 11.

WHO ARE THE LANDLORDS?

To whom does the land belong ? That question touches the root of the matter of free land. We have seen, in the preceding chapter, that about 600 nobles are in possession of more than a fifth, and that, including the nobility, about 7000 persons are in possession as landlords of four-fifths (more than 52,000,000 acres) of the United Kingdom. I say " in possession," because the landed gentry in this country are not "owners," in the strict and proper sense of the word, of the lands with which their names and titles are connected. Our word "landlords," which is as peculiar to the United Kingdom as our land-system is unique, fits their position more truly. It is a national evil of the gravest character, that the persons who are in possession of four-fifths of the soil are not, and can never be, responsible, interested owners of the fee-simple, or freehold, of their lands. Take the case of the leader of the peerage, the Duke of Norfolk, an exemplary nobleman and a good landlord. His Grace is not owner of Arundel Castle. There is no owner of the Norfolk estates. The Duke, like other dukes, has signed away his inheritance and

WHO ABE THE LANDLORDS? 15

is but a life tenant. The superior title to the propertyhas passed to his baby son, the Earl of Arundel and Surrey, who, when he reaches manhood, will in turn be called upon to renounce the possibility of becoming freeholder of the vast estates of the House of Norfolk. I have no doubt whatever that the Earl of Derby, second only in precedence among the earls of England, has had far greater happiness in the affairs of the Foreign Office than in the concerns of his famUy estates. Why should he not ? In Downing Street, he was the responsible Minister ; at Knowsley, his legal title is vastly inferior to that which may belong to the infant son of his brother, the . Secretary of State for War. Lord Derby, after the manner of English landed gentry, has by signature forfeited aU possibility of being proprietor, and the ownership of the estates now passing under his name as owner, is devolved by deed of settlement upon the eldest male child of his brother, who may, if he refuse to re-settle the property when he arrives at manhood, be some day freeholder of the Knowsley estate — a position which his distinguished uncle has, in accordance with the unwritten social code of England, been permitted by most injurious custom to abandon for ever for himself Lately, we have had the edifying spectacle of a peer coming forward to denounce this arrangement. On the 28th October, 1879, Lord Carington gave a dinner to his Buckinghamshire tenants, and communicated to- them his view as tenant for life, or nominal owner, of the Carington estates, of the permissive law and the general practice of entail and strict settlement.

Lord Carington said, " I ask you to consider the position of the ordinary landowner of the present time — by that I mean a man who derives the whole of his income from land — ^tenant for life of an estate more or less incumbered with settlements and mortgages and other fixed charges." Lord Carington then proceeded to state that which gives especial interest to his remarks ; his " own case." His lordship continued: "Following the advice of my best friends during my father's lifetime, being twenty-two years of age, I re-entailed the estate. I inherited eleven years ago, property in Bucks, in Lincolnshire, and in Wales. I foimd property had been bought in Bucks, and to pay for that property the Welsh estate had to be sold, and the money re-invested in the land purchased in Bucks. The farm-buildings were so bad on the Welsh property that it was calculated that the purchaser would have to expend one whole year's rental on them to put them in decent repair. Mind, I do not blame my father for. this ; but I do blame the strictness of the entail, which prevented him putting the buildings into such a condition as to efaable the tenants to do justice to themselves and the land by which they got their living. The river Humber washed away five acres of good land at Winteringham, and formed an island in the bed of the river. As a tenant for life I could not aflFord to repel the attacks of the river or to accept the gifts of the ocean, for I could not charge the estate for permanent improvements, nor could I sell a single acre of the thirty-four square miles which I inherited. Under these circumstances, what are the landlords to do ? On all sides we hear of reductions and returns to tenants- These are duly chronicled in the newspapers with a

WHO ABE THE LANDLORDS? 17

certain grim humour aa 'Kberality of a landlord.' It keeps some tenants going and saves the landlord having to cultivate, but ten per cent, reduction is no real use and •doesn't solve the question at all. . . . The time has come that the great question of entail should be calmly discussed. Many consider that the laws which allow a landowner, by his deed or by his will, to prevent his land being sold, seized, or lessened in size, either during his own life, or for many years after his death, are necessary for the very existence of the landed interest of England. May these laws not be a positive danger to the country, and one of the reasons for the present agricultural distress ? In no way do I wish to introduce a principle that a living man may not do what he likes with his own — ^buy, seU, let, or farm as much as he chooses, leave it aU to his eldest son, divide it amongst his children, or leave it entirely away. But though we properly respect the rights of the living, ought we not to curtail the power of the dead ? The largest landowner in England and Scotland has a total of 1,358,54!8 acres. ^ I see no harm in that ; there is no reason why he should not own 2,000,000 acres ; but what I do think wrong is that a landowner should, either by his own act or by the deed of his predecessors, be saddled with an enormous tract of country of which it is impossible for him to get rid of a square yard, however necessary, however beneficial the sale of a small portion of it would be to the country, the estate, to his tenants, or to himself I will try to show what the consequence is. In the north of the county [Bucks] I have two strong clay farms on my hands; one I cannot get a bid for,

c nobody will cultivate it at any rent. I say to my agent, * What am I to do ? ' He answers, ' The buildings must be rebuilt, the worst land laid down in grass, the land drained and cleansed, and in two years you may get a tenant ? ' Very good, but all this ought to have been done years ago and the tenant would have been saved, and the land would never have got into so miserable a condition. But the same millstone is round my neck that hampered my father, that I must wear till my death, my brothers as well, if they succeed me, and the land is not free till after our deaths, or the twenty-first birthday of an imbom heir. As tenant for life, I hoped against hope, trusted to the good season of 1879 to put things right; that season failed, the tenant is ruined, and the land starved. It is a small matter, one farm in hand, you will say ; but look around us. I hear of a proprietor with 4000 acres on his hands, a Berkshire landowner with thirteen farms, and land thrown up in all directions. People would improve their properties if they could, but the majority cannot, as is shown by the committee of the House of Lords, consisting of the Duke of Richmond, Marquis of Salisbury, Earl of Derby, and Lord Egerton of Tatton, who reported, in 1870, that of 20,000,000 acres in this country requiring drainage, only 3,000,000 had been drained, and that, taking into account also aU other necessary improvements, only one-fifth of the land had been properly dealt with. Is not this a serious state of things ? Farmers say, ' It is not so much the low prices we complain of, but the yield is so bad.* What else can you expect ? We shall be told that these views are dangerous

WHO ARE THE LANDLORDS? 19

to the Constitution, to the Queen, to the House of Lords, and to the welfare of England generally. But is it possible to deny how much good has been done by the gradual reforms that have been brought about in the present reign? Is it not better that questions of this importance should be properly and reasonably discussed on their merits than that strong opposition should be offered to their very mention, that aU the power of intellect, position, and wealth should be brought against the idea that such laws may be improved, until England wakes up suddenly to find the measure of such reforms brought forward by those who express themselves most hostile to them, and a Land Bill hastily passed through Parliament, with clauses that they may take away from landowners the fee-simple of their land ? We shall be told that these restraints are necessary owing to the temptations to young men coming early into their estates. But, as a rule, peers do not inherit before middle age ; it is the exception, and many of the young ones recognize the responsibilities of property. Are we, for the sake of protecting a few, a very few, foolish men from the consequences of their own folly, to hamper the whole of the landed proprietors of England, and to make living men, anxious to improve their estates and benefit their tenants, feel the ' dead man's grip,' from which there is no escape ? I have reminded you of the disturbed state of the country previous to the repeal of the Com Laws. Li 1879 comes again a time of trial, and we have distress, but not disaffection; disappointment, but not despair. Is it too much to hope that the land laws will also be calmly considered with a view to their improvement ;