CHAPTER IV.

DISTRIBUTION OF LANDED PROPERTY.

Tendency THE distribution of landed property in England,

of landed

property to so far as ownership is concerned, is, by the

diminution

in the

number of

small estates.

growing wealth of the country, constantly tend

ing to a reduction in the number of small estates. This tendency is further promoted by the law, which permits entails and settlements, thus hindering the natural sale of land so dealt with; and also by rights of primogeniture, which prevent subdivision of landed property among the family in case of intestacy. Cultivation thus passes out of the hands of small owners into those of tenant-farmers, causing a gradual decrease of the agricultural population, and a proportionate increase of the towns. This has been much accelerated by a policy of Free Trade, which has at once opened up the markets of the world for our commerce, and for the

HOME PRODUCE COMPARED WITH FOREIGN. 41

produce of our mines and manufactures. These are advantageously interchanged for the corn and other agricultural products of foreign lands. This will go on while the commerce is found mutually profitable. And it will be profitable so long as, by superior skill and enterprise, combined with exceptional mineral advantages, we can undersell other countries in the produce of our manufactories and mines, while they can supply us with corn at a cheaper rate than we can grow it at home. Our present relation with foreign countries is becoming like that of a crowded capital, which draws its fresh supplies of vegetables, milk, and meat from the marketgardens, meadows, and rich grazings in its vicinity, but looks to more distant lands for the corn and other commodities which bear long transport from cheaper and more distant farms. Nearly one-half of our corn is now of foreign growth, and not quite one-third of our meat and dairy produce; whilst year by year our corn-land is giving place to the more profitable produce afforded by the milk and grazing and market - garden farms, which are gradually

Proportion of land

owners to whole population.

extending their circle. Such produce renders the land more valuable, more tempting prices are offered for it to the small landowners, and their numbers decrease. Wealthy men from the mines and manufactories and shipping and colonial interests, and the learned professions, desire to become proprietors of land; and some competition exists between them and those landowners of older standing whose increasing wealth tempts them on suitable opportunities to enlarge the boundaries of their domains. Thus small proprietors are bought out, and agricultural landowners diminish in number; while, side by side with them, vast urban populations are growing up, having little other connection with the land than that of recruiting their population from it, and affording the best market for its produce.

The Domesday Book for the United Kingdom, lately published, divides the landowners into two classes-those who have less than one acre of land, and those who have one acre and upwards. The former comprise 70 per cent. of the whole; but as none of this class has so

PROPORTION OF LANDOWNERS TO POPULATION. 43

much as an acre, and they hold together less than a two-hundredth part of the land, they may be regarded as householders only. Excluding these as not properly agricultural landowners, it may then fairly be said that one person in every hundred of the entire population is a landowner. Subdividing that figure by the average numbers of each family, it may be concluded that every twentieth head of a family is an owner of land.

But the tenant-farmers are entitled also to

be reckoned as part owners of agricultural pro

Increased by the

interests of tenant

perty, for, in the crops and live and dead stock, farmers as

they own equal to one-fifth of the whole capital

value of the land. Part of this is incorporated with the soil, and it is all as indispensable for the production of crops as the land itself. As cultivators, they employ and possess individually a larger capital than the peasant proprietors of other countries in their double capacity as owners and cultivators. They are 1,160,000 in number, and when added to 320,000 owners of one acre and upwards, make 1,480,000 altogether, engaged in the ownership and cultivation

part

owners of agricultural pro

perty.

One-fifth of the

land held by the

Peerage.

of the soil. When reckoned as heads of families they comprise more than one-fifth of the total male adult population; and it is thence not unreasonable to infer that, in that proportion, the people of this country are more or less interested in the preservation of landed property.

When we come more closely to analyse the purely landowning class, the aggregation of land amongst small numbers becomes very conspicuous. One-fourth of the whole territory, excluding those under one acre, is held by 1,200 persons, at an average for each of 16,200 acres ; another fourth by 6,200 persons, at an average for each of 3,150 acres; another fourth by 50,770 persons, at an average for each of 380 acres; whilst the remaining fourth is held by 261,830 persons, at an average for each of 70 acres. An interesting compilation from the Domesday Books by the Scotsman newspaper shows that the Peerage of the United Kingdom, about 600 in number, possess among them rather more than a fifth of all the land, and between a tenth and an eleventh of its annual income.