remain with the younger child, in which case it would have the benefit of residency and personal supervision, or it would be transferred by sale, in which case it would have the benefit of the outlay of capital which is commonly attached in this country to a change of ownership, and the benefit in many cases of residency too. Moreover, the abolition of the rights of primogeniture would probably in the long run more than counteract the consolidating faculty of capital, the influences producing division would vanquish the influences producing aggregation.

The faculty of entail is a powerful auxiliary to the law of primogeniture, in preventing the dissemination of landed property; and I do not know that there exists a single specious argument for maintaining a distinction between the destination of real and the destination of personal property, except this, that the permanent attachment of landed estates to particular families, with all the social advantages connected with this arrangement, is necessary in a country in which one of the branches of the Legislature has a hereditary character. The reply to this argument may be found in the following considerations: The law of entail, as it now exists, does not effectually prevent the alienation and burden of peerage estates. The freedom of testamentary power would enable peers to make sufficient provision for the independence and dignity of the head of the family. The removal of an artificial safeguard, complicated and imperfect in its character, would increase the sense of moral responsibility in the possessors of hereditary seats in the Legislature, and thus indirectly add respect and stability to the order. If, however, these arguments were not considered convincing, and if special provisions were deemed indispensable for families invested with legislative functions, there would be no difficulty whatever in attaching rights of primogeniture and powers of destination to particular families, and a character of indivisibility to particular estates. Provisions of that nature are familiar to the legislation of some of the German States. I do not advocate the adoption of such exceptional expedients. I do not think them necessary. They are only suggested, in order to show that a general wrong cannot be defended on the ground of a particular danger.

The abolition of the rights of primogeniture, and the restriction of the powers of distinction with reference to land, would increase the number of estates placed in circulation, and disseminate the benefits of landed property without any violent shock to existing interests and feelings. The process of subdivision would be slow, but it would be safe and progressive. Land

would be rendered more accessible to the smaller industrial capitalist, to the farmer, if he elected to acquire it, to associated capital engaged in the purchase, sub-division and resale of land, to the industrious artisan, to the labourer eventually. But an immediate and immense benefit would be felt in this respect, that the impression would be removed that a powerful interest in the country is supported by indirect means and factitious contrivances, and that other classes are debarred from social advantages by partial legislation, or for want of legislation, founded in generous and unselfish principles.

If we turn from the consideration of the power exerted by primogeniture and entail in consolidating land, to contemplate the effect of those laws on the social constitution of the labouring classes, it must, I think, be admitted that the mere size of estates in which primogeniture is chiefly operative has no pernicious results. On the contrary, the greatest estates are often the best ordered. It is rather the law of entail which acts as a bar to social amelioration. In discussing this question we must be careful to avoid extreme and indiscriminate assertions. The condition of life ownership has not always and everywhere prevented the development of cultivation, the improvement of farm-buildings, or the reconstruction of the habitations of the poor. If I were to conduct any gentleman whom I have the honour to address through the south of Scotland, that part of the kingdom to which I am least a stranger, he would find it difficult to discriminate from the aspect of the fields, the state of the fences, or the quality of the buildings between the land which is free and the land which is bound. He might be shown estates under strict destinations, where every habitation has been rebuilt in a single generation by the intelligence, philanthropy, and taste of a life landlord; and he might be shown lands purchased as an investment, in which improvements of this nature have been restricted to a bare commercial necessity. Or he might see an entailed estate which is a model of order, lying contiguous to one which is a picture of social desolation and neglect. There have been on entailed estates many causes at work which have tempered the mischief which naturally belongs to the practice of entail. The development of mineral industry has in many cases enriched the life proprietor; the State and the loan societies have come to his assistance. Influences of a moral nature have been powerful auxiliaries in the same direction. The life proprietor is still moved by duty, by self-respect, by traditional affection, by emulation, to make great pecuniary sacrifices in advancing the moral and material condition of those by whom he is sur

rounded. To do this sort of good is even a selfish pleasure. The spectacle of disorder and decay is revolting, and the habitations of the poor are the furniture of the estate. The stability of personal and family relations which is attached to the power of entail, may even in some cases inspire greater efforts of an unremunerative kind, than would be made by a proprietor who cannot transmit his possession with security to his posterity. There are men who would do more for an unborn descendant than for an unknown purchaser. I believe, however, that examples of extensive disinterested ameliorations on entailed estates will generally be found in the case of the very large proprietor, who is so fortunate as to unite a good heart and healthy cultivated tastes with a political and social position of the first order. It cannot be denied that among life proprietors of the middle or smaller class, to whom no accessory source of fortune has been opened, who are burdened with transmitted charges, and who have the obligation of increasing them, there is a painful struggle to maintain the decencies of an inherited position, and to fulfil the duties which are attached to the possession of land under all conditions. Life landlords of this sort find it difficult to burden an incommensurate rental with the heavy deductions rendered necessary by the high interest payable on redeemable loans for the execution of improvements, of which they recognise the pressing importance, but which are not directly reproductive. On land held thus, and there is much of it, the fetters of entail lie very heavily; and I do not see how any commensurate remedy can be devised unless those fetters be struck off. No doubt some palliatives might be contrived in connection with the expedients introduced during the last thirty years for the partial emancipation of the life landlord. The terms on which money can be borrowed on entailed estates might be rendered more easy, and the purposes for which it can be borrowed might be enlarged; but I cannot regard proposals of this sort in any other light than as a feeble struggle for the prolongation of a system which is doomed to early and inevitable extinction. If the full productive faculties of the land are to be called forth, if full justice is to be done to the material and moral requirements of the working classes, whether agricultural or industrial, the entail of land should be absolutely prohibited in future, and existing life proprietors should be empowered to obtain funds for improvements, both by the sale of a portion of the estate, and by contracting loans, without provisions for reimbursement, under the sanction of the Inclosure Commissioners, or some other competent authority acting under liberal impulses and instructions. When every artificial obstacle to the reparti

tion and improvement of land has been removed-when every proprietor has been granted, with a just reservation of the rights of others, the largest share of power to do his duty by the land and his dependents-the question may be fairly agitated as to how far the State may properly step in to enforce the performance of such duties by the proprietor, or to assume that performance in the case of obstinate neglect.

After making a liberal recognition of what the proprietors of land have done in the way of sanitary and moralizing work in this country, the truth is written far and wide upon the face of the land that much more lies undone. The reports of the Commission appointed to inquire into the employment of children, young persons and women, in agriculture, are the true mirror of the condition of the labouring classes depending on the land. There we can see how the labourer lives, what he learns, how he works and struggles, sometimes starves, and mostly ends; not in the kindly shadow of the hall, not on the pleasant verge of the garden, the park or the home farm, but over the common surface of the soil, out of sight and partly out of mind. Nothing is disclosed in stronger colours in those reports than this, that the dwellings of the rural population urgently demand a very general reconstruction. It would be hazardous to assert in the face of those statements that more than two-thirds of the existing habitations are satisfactory or susceptible of improvement and enlargement. The last census report for Scotland tells the same story and supplies some statistical details. One-third of the population live in tenements comprising one room only, another third live in houses with two rooms; one-eighth only possess dwellings with three rooms. There is little distinction between the scale of lodging for the industrial and for the agricultural classes. As far as rooms are concerned, dwellers in towns are provided in the same way as dwellers in the country. A comparison of the reports concerning England with those concerning Scotland lead me to believe that with reference to house room the two peoples are now much alike. If a minimum of one-third of the agricultural homes of Great Britain require to be rebuilt, you have something like a measure of our great necessity on the rural side. It is a matter of building seven hundred thousand cottages at a cost of seventy million sterling.

In regarding the work that lies before us, two things strike me as certain. The work cannot be done in any considerable measure by the labourers, and it must be barren of all direct remuneration to the landlord.

The agricultural reports are decidedly adverse to the old

fashioned freehold cottage. Give the labourer a patch of soil for himself or let him take it; he will raise a hovel which will too often become a scene of over-crowding, dilapidation, slovenliness, and every sanitary abuse. Build the labourer a substantial and wholesome habitation with a garden and pasture allotment, and let him become the proprietor of the place by a course of industry and self-denial, there is a prospect that it will be kept with decency and pride. The man cannot make the house, the house will make the man.

I have seen various projects and estimates to prove that cottage building may become a good investment, but reason and experience convince me of the contrary, as far as the landlord is concerned. The rural population are not too few for their work. They are in some places too numerous. We do not want more men and additional cottages, but better men and better cottages. The proprietor cannot gain by multiplying the dwellings of the poor, except at the cost of another proprietor; and at the best the rent will scarcely do more than cover the repairs. As a rule, the landlord can only create good dwellings as substitutes for bad ones. Nor can he charge a higher rent for a good dwelling than he does for a bad one. The labourer is highly rented; sometimes rack-rented already. A new house will usually be found more expensive than an old one. It requires more fire and more furniture. The rents now paid should in many cases be reduced, if the labourer is to be settled in a more spacious and better divided dwelling, and if he is at the same time to withdraw his children from field labour and pay for their elementary education. Indirectly, I concede that the landlord may obtain some compensation for his outlay. The reconstruction of cottages, when pursued on a comprehensive plan, will be accompanied by redistribution; the habitation of a labourer will be placed advisedly he will be fixed nearer his work; the labour supply will be rendered more convenient and more regular; the hours of labour may be better assorted; and the strength of the labourer will be economized for remunerative exertion. The general improvement which may thus be effected in the working capacity of a farm may give it some increased value in the market. On the whole, however, the reconstruction of cottages by the landlord, with a due regard to moral and sanitary requirements, will be a work of love and pride, not a work of profit.

Rural cottages fall into two groups. Those which are associated with the current cultivation of the farm, and are destined to be habitations of farm-servants, and those which are intended to be the dwellings of unattached working men employed on