The rapid rise in the value of land was, as we have seen, the tide on which the feudal tenants rose into owners of land. And just as in their case the margin between their fixed rents and the value of the land was constantly increasing as land rose in price, so also farmers' leases rapidly became "beneficial leases" of constantly increasing value. These leases were generally long ones, and the rent could of course only be raised as the leases expired. Thus Stafford, in his "Brief Conceit of English Policy," makes his Knight, as the representative of the landowners of the Tudor period, say :

"Though it be true that such lands as come to our hands, either by purchase or by determination, and ending of such terms of years, or other estates that I or my ancestors had granted them in times past, I do either receive a better fine than of old was used, or enhance the rent thereof. . . . . . Yet in all my lifetime I look not that the third part of my land shall come to my disposition that I may enhance the rent of the same; but it shall be in men's holding either by leases or by copy granted before my time."1

The fact that the long unexpired leases of the farming tenants were beneficial leases, was proved by the fines which they could afford to pay for renewals of them. The following passage, from Harrison's Description of Britain in 1577," will show clearly how the rise of prices and of land increased the prosperity and wealth of the farmer:

66

"In my time, although peradventure four pounds of old rent be improved to forty or fifty pound, yet will the farmer think his gains very small towards the midst of his term if he have not six or seven years' rent lying by him therewith to purchase a new lease. For what stock of money soever he gathereth in all his years it is often seen that the landlord will take such order with him for the same when he reneweth his lease (which is commonly eight or ten years before it be expired, sith it is now almost grown into a custom that if he come not to his lord so long before, another shall step in for a reversion, and so defeat him outright), that it shall never trouble him more than the hair of his beard when the barber hath washed and shaven it from his chin." 2

At the same time these same economic causes worked against the small feudal holder. For the commercial item, so to speak, in his business was small. He looked for his living, not so much to the use of any commercial capital, or of any extensive power of management and farming skill, as to the employment of his labour on his little holding or otherwise; and with rising prices the interests of labour went to the wall. The increase of population, which by increasing the demand for land increased its price, and favoured the large farmer under a long lease, increased the supply of labour, and so knocked down the value of the commodity in which the small farmer, or feudal tenant, dealt. It is true that the small freehold or copyhold tenant, like the lord of the manor, grew into an owner of his holding on the top of the tide of rising prices. But what was the use of the increased value of his holding so long as he farmed it himself, and made no more profit on it than before? We have (1) Harleian Miscellanies, lx. 149. (2) Fol. 86.

seen that the customary tenant did not live only out of his land. His little holding was what enabled him to keep his yoke of oxen for his dung-cart and his plough; so that his trade, after all, was not so much that of a farmer as a ploughman or carter. He was what Chaucer called a "true swinker"-a hard-worker for his bread; and, as I have said, his prosperity followed the lot of labour, not of capital. The rage for pasture was, moreover, directly detrimental to his trade of ploughing, and often ruinous to it. Lastly, his copyhold rents and fines to some extent were arbitrary; in some cases not being absolutely fixed in amount, but rather a fixed proportion of the improved value of the land.' Hence sometimes a fine was demanded sevenfold what he had been wont to pay before the great rise in prices, and so was sometimes greater in amount than his store of cash. Non-payment was too often to him, as to the Irish tenant, ejectment from his holding. Harrison says every trifling excuse was taken advantage of "to lay infinite acres of corn-land into pasture;" and "as for taking down of houses, a small fine will bear out a great many." And in another place he tells us that

"When some covetous man espies a further commodity in their commons, holds, and tenures, he doth find such means as thereby to wipe out many of their occupyings."3

And this was one of the grievances to which Sir Thomas More alluded in his "Utopia." He speaks of tenants "being got rid of by force or fraud, or tired out by repeated injuries into parting with their property."

It is evident, then, that the good times for large farmers and landowners were hard times for small farmers and copyholders; and that, as a consequence, the economic tendency towards large estates and farms set in which, whether bad or good, continues to the present day. It is not needful in this connection to discuss the question whether it be good or bad; but it may be well to point out the fact how rapidly, under its influence, the agriculture of England had advanced. The vast extension of sheep-farming was of course selfevident, but arable farming had also made great advances. To show this, I will simply compare the yield of crops in the fourteenth century, as computed by Professor Rogers from the College farm accounts, and in the last half of the sixteenth century, as recorded by Harrison: 5

Wheat
Barley
Oats

4

(1) Thus a fine on admission of the tenant's heir on his death was ultimately fixed at not more than two years' improved value.

(2) Fol. 92.

(3) Fol. 107.

(4) Vol. i. p. 51.

(5) P. 38.

"Throughout the land in common and indifferent years."

It would appear from this comparison that the productiveness of land had at least doubled in the interval between the two dates; and I think a practical farmer, if asked for the cause of this greater productiveness, would lay his finger at once on the fact of the introduction by farmers with capital of sheep and cattle upon the fallows and pastures, and the consequent increase in the quantity of manure which went to enrich the soil.

It is not needful for me here to trace at any greater length the history of the process by which, as feudal tenancies were emerging into absolute ownership, and land, in consequence, came, as it were, into the commercial market, the severance of ownership and occupation of land was so generally effected as it has been in England. The facts already pointed out are sufficient to forbid our attributing so much of this process as some would to the feudal spirit of our landlaws, to our maintenance of the law of primogeniture, and so forth. Feudal land-law, as I have shown, tends towards the wide distribution of landed property, and not its concentration. It has been in almost all feudal countries, except England, the parent of peasant proprietorship. It is the commercial and not the feudal spirit which in England has worked against peasant properties. Wipe out the commercial element from English history, and you wipe out those causes which have worked against peasant proprietorship in England. Why, for instance, did the depopulation of the Black Death tend in England to loosen the people from the soil and from their feudal tenures, while it did not do so in most other countries? I do not say that it was the only cause, but certainly, as I have shown elsewhere, the greatest cause why it did so was, that the commercial and manufacturing element in England was so much more powerful and attractive than in most other countries. But for the commercial element, the feudal system in England would probably, as I have said, have remained in full force as in other countries, and the English peasants have become peasant proprietors.

The history here traced, if I have read it rightly, shows that the peasant holdings have passed through the same stages as in other countries, i.e., through fixity of tenure into proprietorship or absolute ownership. England, in fact, took the lead of most nations in this process. The English peasantry was almost the first (except the Swiss) to be emancipated into peasant proprietorship. But the history shows, further, that as this process was going on, the commercial spirit, which distinguished England, acted as a sort of flux in the dissolution of the peasant holdings. When, therefore, I ask myself candidly what has banished peasant proprietorship from England, I am compelled to answer-Not so much the perpetuation of feudal maxims, not even what Mr. Rogers calls so bitterly "that device of evil times, strict settlement" (though these may have had

some influence in this direction), but far more, and mainly, the application of commercial principles to land.

I see in this severance of the three elements of agriculture-th land, the capital, the labour-something altogether unfeudal, but not at all uncommercial. I see that the moment land is thrown open to commercial principles, it becomes governed by the same laws of political economy which regulate other commodities; and the more free trade in land is secured, the more, as it seems to me, will it be so. The manufacture of agricultural produce becomes subject to the same great laws of division of labour and so forth as regulate the manufacture of pins or of cloth. The law of division of labour resolves itself into two main points:-first, that there is a saving of time and labour in doing things wholesale, or on a large scale, because a man's labour and capital in tools are economised by it; and, secondly, because it admits of the right man being put in the right place, and doing the work for which he is most adapted; and why this law should apply to pin-making and cloth-manufacturing, and not to corn-growing, I do not know. If in pin-making it be true economy for one man to be the owner of the capital in machinery and tools and other men to use them, for one man to give his whole time to sharpening the points and another to putting on the heads; if in cloth-making it be true economy for one man to be the owner of the mill, and the spindles, and the looms, and for other men to be the spinners and the weavers; it seems to me that it may possibly be true economy in agriculture for one man to be the landowner, another the farmer, and others the labourers.

It seems to me that where commercial principles prevail, the man who has surplus capital to invest, who wants a solid investment without any risk, and, moreover, appreciates the social position which the ownership of land gives, is the only man who can afford, in the long run, to invest his money at 23 per cent.; that the farmer who has only a limited capital, but considerable skill and power of management, and wishes to employ it in the trade of farming, cannot afford to invest his capital in both the ownership and farming of land, because by so doing he must limit the extent of his business within needlessly narrow limits, waste that portion of his capital which might earn in the trade of farming double the interest yielded by investment in land, and throw away a portion of his skill and power of management which might be expended with advantage on a larger farm than he can possibly own. Lastly, that the labourer should, by becoming rooted to a few acres of ground, be forced to do all the multifarious labours of his farm in succession, be tied to the plough-tail, when he has within him, perhaps, the capability of managing a larger farm, or be compelled to manage or mismanage his peasant holding when he is capable only of following the plough—this seems to me very

possibly an uneconomical proceeding, judged merely by commercial maxims. I see that political economy at present seems by no means to favour peasant proprietorship, whether it be of land or of looms. The tendency towards division of labour still seems the predominant one in all trades which have for their object the production of articles as regards which quantity and cheapness are essential. And I do not see that political economy is likely to make an exception as regards food which she does not make as regards clothing.1

Whilst, therefore, the path of wisdom seems to me to lie in the direction of securing still more than at present "free-trade in land "the sweeping away of those hindrances to the free purchase and sale of land which are involved in the law of primogeniture and strict settlements-I should not venture to predict that this further abandonment of land to the commercial spirit would operate against large estates and in favour of peasant proprietorship. All it is safe to affirm is that its legitimate result would be that it would favour that size of holding which was economically most advantageous. Nor do I feel at all sure that the removal of all undue hindrances to the occupation of land on purely commercial principles would work any more in favour of small farms than large ones. The present system-I may call it the mock-feudal system-of land management seems to me to inflict even greater evils on society by interfering with the proper occupation of the land than by hampering the free purchase and sale of it. By its system of strict settlements, its game-laws, and its practice of refusing leases in order to convert the votes of tenants into landlords' perquisites, it habitually subordinates the agricultural use of land to the artificial bolstering up of families and political influence; it sacrifices the interests of society and the equitable rights of tenants to the gratification of an aristocratic love of power and sport. It is a system, moreover, which cannot be abolished abruptly, and its evils with it. Even were strict settlements abolished the ownership of land would still in course of nature pass under minorities and covertures; and as to the system of refusing leases and keeping tenants at will to secure political power, it rests upon the sentiments of a class, and can only be expected to die out slowly. But suppose the two great evils remedied in some way. Suppose, e.g., (1) provisions were made that there should always, notwithstanding minorities and covertures, be an owner or land-manager of some kind legally capable of performing the full duties of ownership; and (2) that a "four-course-tenancy, under proper regulations, were substituted for the present "yearto-year" tenancy as the normal tenancy in the absence of leases; -assume even the object attained which such reforms would have (1) The application of co-operation to the ownership and farming of land would be a practical recognition of the principle here pointed out, and no exception to it.