property in cases of intestacy-when the State ceased to inculcate primogeniture, parents would gain that proper authority which they never possess over the "heir." This scheme would leave intact their power to bestow their possessions in the customary manner, but in that important national as well as family work-the training of the masters of great property-the law would have put into the hands of parents a power for which those who are most sensible of their responsibilities would surely be grateful. Insolvent landowners would be relieved of the millstone round their necks-restored to a natural position; not seeming rich and being unutterably poor. They would be real owners of their property. A large proportion of the 30,000 families who mainly possess the agricultural land of the country could give, without trouble or expense, satisfactory evidence of acts of ownership for thirty years, and they might then burn those mouldy parchments, each reference to which at present costs 1007., or, much better, preserve them as curiosities and part of the family history. The registration of their property would supply an indefeasible title in the place of these cumbrous muniments, and would give an increased value to their land. When registration became general, as it would by this plan, and being made compulsory on sale, we should see estates advertised for sale as "registered" land, and for such the price would be higher than for unregistered land, probably by two to four years' purchase upon all but the most extensive or costly properties.

Lastly, the landlords ought to accept free trade in land if they wish to avoid measures which will have less regard for their interests. Let them reflect on their position. See where they stand! They are 30,000 in 30,000,000; they have lost the rotten boroughs; they have lost the peculiar control they once possessed-which they usually exercised in a negative manner-over national education; they are about to lose, by the agency of a really secret ballot, their power of intimidation at elections. Resistance to reform will assuredly produce revolution, and the first act of successful revolution would be to impose heavy taxation upon the land, and to decree compulsory distribution at death, proportioned by law. It is certain as sunrise that our land system will not be permitted to continue in its present form. Revolution might witness the installation of the plan for "nationalization," the hobby of so many of the working classes, by which the State would purchase the interest of the landlords, and grant leases of the lands as part of the public domain. Property owners, friends of order, must condemn our land system, because it deprives our country of the unfailing resources which other lands possess against revolution. Our land system is very dangerously contracted in regard to ownership. There is absolutely no power in the rural districts to gainsay the will of the masses in the towns. When a socialistic commune was erected in Paris, and demanded the exclusion of the city from the general law of the country, there were 5,000,000 landowners in France ready to say "No," and to enforce the views of property

The

upon revolutionary Paris. Here there is no such force. 30,000 families of the United Kingdom could not stand a moment against the breath of revolution; and, as for the peasantry, there are not (if they were the friends of the landed interest, which is not the case) more of them in the larger island than a single branch of manufacture collects in the vicinity of Manchester. The Reform Act of 1867, the work of a ministry of landowners, carried by the country party-Mr. Disraeli having "educated" them to the taskthis constitutionally placed the supreme power in the hands of the population of the towns, and the ballot will confirm their authority. The evident and irrevocable tendency is towards the equalization of electoral areas; one after another the smallest boroughs are disfranchised, and a powerful stimulus in the same direction will be given by that provision of the Ballot Bill, charging the necessary expenses of elections upon the ratepayers; for these charges will fall heavy upon the "pocket" boroughs, and be unfelt by the populous constituencies. I am no alarmist; I sincerely believe it would be dangerous for the landed interest to set its face against reform. To what could they trust in such a policy? The forbearance of the now all-powerful people? Why should these exercise forbearance? Does history read such a lesson to the people? About two hundred years ago the position in which the landowners and the people find themselves to-day was reversed; the former were mightiest in Parliament. And what did they do? They found a large taxation levied on the land, of which it is not untrue to say that it was the purchase-money of their estates; they threw off these feudal dues, and substituted an Act "that the people of England should pay a tax of 1s. 3d. per barrel on all their beer and ale," with a proportionate sum ou all other liquors sold throughout the kingdom. And it was enacted that a moiety of this tax "shall be settled on the King's Majesty, his heirs and successors, in full recompense and satisfaction for all tenures in capite and by knight service, and of the. courts of wards and liveries, and all emoluments thereby accruing, and in full satisfaction for all purveyance." This Act was carried in a house of 300 members by a majority of two. Then, again, when a land tax of 4s. in the pound had been imposed, the landowners contrived, in 1697, so to frame the tax (9 Wm. III. c. 10) that it should not increase with the value of the land, as was at first intended, but should be a fixed annuity without rise in value. I do not bring forward these things as charges against the landed interest: they are now merely historical; nor do I refer to them as incentives to those whose ancestors paid so dearly for the legislation of the Caroline period. I hope the people will use their power wisely and fairly; but I have yet to see a party which, being in undisputed possession of authority, has been uninfluenced by motives of class interest. I refer to these things as a warning to the landowners, suggesting their acceptance of such moderate, such wholly advantageous reforms as those I have sketched, in the friendly spirit in which they are framed. When Cobden said, in 1845, "I warn the aristocracy not

to force the people to look into the subject of taxation; not to force them to see how they have been robbed, plundered, and bamboozled for ages by them," he spoke in days very far removed in reference to political affairs from our own. Were he with us now, he would be the first to admit this; but I am very sure that he would demand free trade in land, and, if it were withheld, he would not fail to arouse the people to a sense of their rights in this respect.

The people! Who are they? "The people at large "-of whom Cobden wondered that they were "so tacit in their submission." Why are they not agitating for this reform-for free trade in land? I believe they will be tacit no longer; yet I must express my suspicion that the political education of the people is yet so imperfect, that they do not comprehend the subject. Many think that they have no land, and can have no land, and that therefore it does not concern them. On the side of the people, I regard as most important that question of primogeniture, which would be for ever decided if Mr. Gladstone's "Real Estates Intestacy Bill" became law. This measure would not affect the actual power of the landowner over his property, but it would reform the teaching of the State. The example of the State is a matter of supreme importance to the poor; for if the State inculcate primogeniture, which even such men as Mr. Walter, the chief proprietor of the Times, calls a "flagrant injustice," then there is a process like "dry rot" going on within the body politic, which is ruinous to the interests of the poor. If the State regard not justice, it is the poor who will chiefly suffer. The leaders of society are corrupted when the teaching of the State may be directed by expediency. What is more sad than to find a man like Lord Russell defending primogeniture, and saying that "the law should adopt the general practice as the rule in cases of intestacy?" Surely Lord Russell then forgot that it is not the law but justice which is represented as blind. The conduct of the Times with regard to this question of free trade in land has too much resembled that of Lord Russell, reminding me of a Californian journal which, I am told, makes it a point never to chronicle an earthquake in San Francisco, lest it should disturb real estate. But the Times is even more devoted; it records everything in favour of the existing land system. I would earnestly entreat its conductors to exert their great influence with the landowners, and to press upon them, in their own interest, the acceptance of free trade in land.

I am not sure by which party this great work will be carried to completion it is both a Conservative and a Liberal measure. When Mr. Gladstone said last year, "It is totally unnecessary that I should do more than assure you, that during what may remain to me of political life I shall continue to feel the same unfailing anxiety both for the personal fame of Mr. Cobden, and the gratitude of the country to him for his distinguished services, and even more for the prevalence of the principles to which his life was devoted, and which, had he been spared, would have been still more efficaciously promoted;" when Mr. Gladstone used these words, he was certainly aware that

Mr. Cobden had longed for free trade in land. It would not surprise me to see a competition between the two great parties in the State, for the honour of effecting these needful changes in the laws relating to the tenure of land.

Remarks upon the Mineral Wealth of Cornwall. By J. H. COLLINS, F.G.S.

THE Cornish peninsula has been famous for its mineral wealth for

This wealth at first seemed to consist of tin alone, but copper has been mined in the county for some hundreds of years, and at present, besides the ores of tin and copper, those of lead, iron, zinc, and other metals are annually raised in considerable quantity, together with very large quantities of slate, granite, and other building stones, and of China stone and China clay. The object of the present paper is to draw attention to the present ore produce only of the county, and to describe some peculiarities connected with the trade

therein.

The ores occur mainly in lodes, not in beds as in some other localities; the tin and copper lodes, except those of St. Just, near the Landsend, having a general direction across those of lead and iron, with meridians, but all varying within considerable limits in different districts. The tin and copper lodes of St. Just, and in a less degree those of St. Ives, are exceptional; the former bearing about 35 degrees N. of W., and the latter about 8 degrees N. of W. All the tin and copper lodes are appropriately parallel to that part of the granitic axis or back bone of the county to which they are nearest. In addition, however, to the occurrence of tin in lodes, it was formerly found in considerable quantity in beds of pebbles, forming the deeper strata of river gravels in many of the Cornish valleys. It is also disseminated through granitic and schistose rocks, or filling their joints, as in the stock-works of Germany.

TIN.

As tin was the most anciently wrought, so it is even now the most important product of the Cornish mines.

The annual yield varies considerably, being much reduced by any considerable reduction of price, and in a corresponding degree increased by an advance of price, the actual deposits being practically inexhaustible. With the present high price, notwithstanding a large advance in the cost of labour and materials, there are several considerable tin works now carried on at a profit, in which the crude ore contains but 4 or 5 lb. of black tin (the name given to the purified ore as sold to the smelter) per ton, and in one instance at least, near St. Austell, not more than 2 lb. In other cases, however, the whole produce of a mine, as first raised, is known to contain 4 per cent. of black tin. At Dolcoath, one of the largest and richest of the

Cornish tin mines, the average produce in black tin of the crude tin stone is about 2 per cent., and much of this is raised from a depth of several hundred fathoms.

The processes by which tin ores are prepared for sale, the various stampings, buddlings, and tozings have been often described, and cannot be further referred to within the brief limits allowed for this paper. It should, however, be remarked that tin ore is much more perfectly freed from its impurities before it is sold than the ores of copper or lead, or indeed those of most other metals. Having been dressed as well as possible, it is sold to the smelter as a brown powder, coarse or fine, sometimes darker, sometimes lighter, as the case may be, under the name of black tin.

The black tin is placed in bags holding about 2 cwt, and carted to the smelting-house by persons employed by the manager of the mine, and mostly at the expense of the mine adventurers. Once arrived the whole parcel is weighed, thrown out into a hutch and well mixed. Two samples are then taken for immediate assay, and on the results of these assays the whole parcel is paid for.

The assay weight is not any exact quantity, but it is nearly 2 oz., and is divided into 20 parts, the number of cwt. in a ton, and the produce of metal in the assay is reckoned as so many parts, 13, 14, as the case may be, in 20, instead of per centages. These of course would be arrived at by simply multiplying the produce by 5. The mode of calculation of the value of any parcel of ore is as follows:The produce of the assay is perhaps 144 in 20. From this is deducted an allowance for cost of smelting, and waste called "returning charge," of generally 14, so that the net produce is reduced to 13. This net produce is multiplied into the "standard," a price fixed from time to time by the smelters, who assemble for the purpose, and which is always below the market price of fine metal, and the result gives the amount paid for the ore in tons. Then supposing the standard to be 141s., the price of a parcel having net produce of 13 will be 141s. × 13— 917. 13s. per ton. This mode of calculation, like all other bargains between miner and smelter, is altogether in favour of the latter. The assay is made by the smelter or his agent. It is made on a small quantity, which never yields so large a per centage as the bulk, nothing less than in 20, or 1 per cent. is reckoned, and the "standard" and "returning charge" are both fixed by the smelter.

It should be remarked that the standards are four in number, at present as follows, varying with the quality of the metal or "white tin" common, 142s.; superior common, 143s. ; fine, 144s. ; superior fine, 145s.

The returning charges are often different for different qualities, but they are generally believed by miners to be largely in excess of what is necessary. For ordinary ores the reduction is 1 in 20, or 64 per cent.; for superior ores, as much as 10 per cent., 15, or even 20 per cent. The quantities and value of black tin, or ore, as sold to the smelters, and of white tin, or metal, as obtained from the