investigation. But proceeding on the assumption that, so far as tenants' improvements are concerned, an equilibrium would result, any positive advance in the average yield per acre over the country could only be referred to causes of that general kind which are incident to the progress of society. I would, therefore, be disposed to combine this index with that of prices in seeking a rule for periodical readjustments of rent. Not that I would propose to fix those who might be charged with the duty of re-valuation absolutely to the results obtained from these data. It would obviously be necessary, particularly at first, to apply any general rule with discrimination and regard to local circumstances. But, I believe, the data in question constitute the main elements of a sound rule, the perfecting of which could only be the work of time and experience.

If these conclusions possess any value they are applicable to all plans for the settlement of Ireland, which partially or generally, directly or indirectly, involve control by the State of the landlord's power over rent. But the plan which I have had mainly in view in this speculation is that which has been propounded by Mr. George Campbell in his work on Irish land. In this work

Mr. Campbell has unfolded a scheme for the solution of the Irish problem incomparably (in the writer's judgment) the best deserving of attention of any that have solicited public notice a scheme of which the characteristic and peculiar merits are that, at the cost of a minimum of disturbance to the actual machinery of Irish society, it

instance, brought under tillage; and since 1847 a large portion of the soil of Ireland, as is well known, has been converted from tillage to pasture; the portion so converted being, as a general rule, land of superior quality. Thus the test, confined to tillage land, would necessarily show a decline of productiveness. Were the returns from the grass lands, as measured by the increase of stock, taken into account, I have no doubt the balance would be more than restored.

(1) Those who have not firmly seized the doctrine of rent will probably see in the proposal to deprive the cultivator of any portion of the results accruing from the increased efficiency of his labours, a violation of equality as between him and those engaged in other industrial occupations. I will ask those who think so to consider what would be the effect of increased efficiency of industry, say in some manufacturing operation. Would it not be a proportional fall in the price of the commodity affected by the improvement? Now if a similar fall took place under similar circumstances in agriculture, the cultivator of the soil and the manufacturer would be on a footing of equality. But, in point of fact, this does not happen; and why? Simply because, owing to the limited extent of the better soils, competition cannot be brought to bear in the one case as in the other. Notwithstanding the immense progress made in the art of agriculture, assisted as this has been by the action of free trade, no serious impression has been made on agricultural prices, while the prices of manufactured articles steadily fall as new improvements come into operation. The deduction, therefore, made from the cultivator's profits of what is due to the exceptional position he occupies, so far from disturbing equality as between him and those engaged in other industries, is the necessary condition towards establishing equality.

(2) "The Irish Land," by George Campbell, Chief Commissioner of the Central Provinces of India. Trübner & Co.

1869.

would accomplish what would be a real and effective security of tenure for the Irish tenant-would accomplish this, moreover, in a manner suited to the ideas and habits of the country, while combining with this end the further considerable advantage of reserving for landlords under the new system a place and function in the national economy. Mr. Campbell's proposal proceeds upon the plan of distinguishing those parts of the country, or more properly those farms, where tenants now hold their land under definite contracts— where, in effect, the English system of managing property prevailsfrom those on which what may be called the Irish practice is followed -that of letting land from year to year, the task of providing for the permanent requirements of the farm being left to the occupier. With the state of things existing on farms in the former category Mr. Campbell does not propose to interfere. But the tenants occupying under the latter conditions, a description which it is scarcely necessary to say covers the mass of the cultivators of Ireland, he would place upon a new footing, constituting them as tenants under status, in contradistinction to those in the other category, who would be regarded as tenants under contract. Once upon the footing of status, no tenant would be evicted except for defined reasons, of which the non-payment of rent, subdivision or sub-letting without the landlord's permission, are the chief; nor could his rent be raised against him except with the sanction of an authority representing the State. With a view to the working of the system, Mr. Campbell proposes the creation of a court or commission with large discretionary powers under an Act of Parliament prescribing its duties and mode of procedure. It would be the business of this court, in the first place, to settle the present position of tenants under status, to consider their claims on the score of past outlay on their farms, and, due allowance made for these, to settle their existing rent; and it would fall to the same commission to re-adjust the rent from time to time in conformity with the changing circumstances of the country, either at periodical re-valuations or on the requirement of either landlord or tenant. By such provisions security of tenure at fair rents would be realised for the cultivators of Ireland. But it is very far from Mr. Campbell's aim that his plan should work as a cast-iron system, stereotyping Irish society in its existing form. He would permit, where circumstances rendered this advisable, the re-appropriation by landlords of land in possession of tenants, but only on the terms of compensating the dispossessed tenant for his improvements, and indemnifying him for the inconvenience he sustained by dispossession; while, subject to the sanction of the landlord, the transference of farms from tenant to tenant would take place with perfect freedom. In providing for transactions of this kind, Mr. Campbell takes custom and Irish ideas as his guide; indeed, the recognition o

custom as at once the outcome of history and the surest startingpoint of reform may be said to be the idée mère of his whole scheme. He, therefore, naturally has recourse to the tenant-right of Ulster, in the legalisation and extension of which he finds the practical solution of the thorny question of compensation for tenants' improvements. By a most ingenious argument Mr. Campbell shows that, on any view of the case which does not amount to practical confiscation of the tenant's interests, this is what compensation in the case of small farmers, as those under status would almost universally be, must come to. In this opinion those who look closely into the matter will be apt to agree with Mr. Campbell. When we have to deal with improvements on a substantial scale, carried on upon farms of considerable extent, there would be little practical difficulty in arriving at a tolerably correct estimate of their value; but when the problem is to ascertain the worth of a thatched shed, or a gateway, or of a rood of reclaimed bog in a farm of ten acres, there is really no other criterion possible than this-how much will another tenant give for them?

I venture to offer two suggestions in the way of corollary to Mr. Campbell's plan. It would only be in keeping with the whole principle of his scheme that, where the State has once charged itself with determining the tenant's rent, no higher rent than that named by the State should be recoverable in a court of law. A provision to this effect would effectually prevent sub-letting, at least in the usual form of that practice. The occupier, it is true, could sell his right of occupancy; and it will no doubt be urged against Mr. Campbell's plan that the sum paid for this by the incoming tenant would, in effect, amount to an increased rent-the objector will no doubt add, on the authority of Adam Smith and Lord Dufferin, an increased rent of the worst kind. The value of this objection I shall presently consider; but, before doing so, let me state my second suggestion, which is that the occupancy right should only be disposable to an incoming tenant. I believe that this restriction would be attended with very beneficial consequences. It would, in the first place, render impossible the mortgaging of the good-will; and secondly, it would indirectly, but I believe very effectually, restrain competition for land within healthy limits. The intending purchaser of the occupancy of a farm might, of course, still raise the money for the purchase of the tenant-right on his personal credit. This is a use of his position and circumstances with which it would be neither possible nor proper to interfere; but, in order to obtain the farm, one of two things he must have-either cash to pay for the good-will, or credit to induce some capitalist to lend him the money necessary for that purpose; either, that is to say, he must already be the master of realised property, or his character must be such as to make those who

know him believe that he is likely to be a prosperous man. The restriction of competition for land to persons satisfying these conditions would render absolutely impossible, under the system of statustenancy, anything at all resembling, or in any respect analogous to, the impossible rents promised by pauper peasants when the whole population entered the list of competition.

It appears then that, even conceding the argument that the purchase of the occupancy right would for the incoming tenant be equivalent to an increase of rent, still this increase supposing the practice limited by the restriction I have indicated-would fall greatly short of what rents may attain under the present régime. But then we are told that the vice of the practice lies in the form, that the sale of the good-will is in effect a fine paid on entry, and that this has been condemned by Adam Smith. The use so constantly made of Adam Smith's authority in this connexion, I must plainly say, does him flagrant injustice-injustice which it is difficult to conceive how any one should commit who had really studied his excellent remarks on the tenure of land. The ruling thought of all that he has said on this subject is the supreme importance of security of tenure for the tenant, as the essential foundation and mainspring of all agricultural progress. He eulogises leases, and, failing leases, customs, or whatever conduces to realising this indispensable condition. "It is those laws and customs," he tells us, "which have perhaps contributed more to the present grandeur of England than all their boasted regulations of commerce taken together." What he says upon the subject of fines is wholly irrelevant to the issue in the present case. He is comparing leases at full rent with leases in which a portion of the rent is fined downthat is to say, alternatives either of which offers equal security to the tenant-and his decision is in favour of that one in which no fine is paid. What relevancy has a judgment on such a point to the question involved in the tenant-right controversy, where the alternative lies, not between different modes of attaining equal security, but between absolute security obtained by a fine accompanied by a moderate rent, and no security accompanied by a high rent without a fine? Had the issue in the Irish controversy really come under Adam Smith's review, no one, who knows anything of the spirit pervading the "Wealth of Nations," can doubt what his decision would have been. At all events, his authority would need to be greater even than it is to outweigh the overwhelming force of the argument from Irish experience. The universal testimony borne to the prosperity of the tenant farmers in Ireland wherever the custom of Ulster prevails-a prosperity all the more conspicuous from its contrast with the general wretchedness of the same classes in other parts of the country-and the almost equally universal recog

nition of the connexion between the system and the results-are facts which no statesman can overlook. Mr. Caird, with all his strong and undisguised prepossessions in favour of Scotch farming, was unable to resist the evidence; and the Times Commissioner, in his singularly impartial descriptions written from direct observation, has recently confirmed the most favourable accounts of the system. In presence of such facts it is idle to talk of Adam Smith, or any other authority. All that has been said, or that can be said, against the practice of tenant-right really amounts to this-that the incoming tenant would be better off if he could get the farm with the advantages of the custom while keeping the money which is the price of those advantages. No doubt he would; and so, and in a still greater degree, would be the purchaser of a peasant property if he had not to pay the purchase-money; and yet peasant proprietors, working at this disadvantage, have contrived notwithstanding to cultivate their farms to some purpose. In neither case can a man spend his capital and have his capital; but he may in either case have that which is worth to him more than capital-the peace of mind that is born of security, the enterprise inspired by the prospect of reaping where he has sown.

Perhaps the greatest danger of the present moment is that on which so much English legislation has made shipwreck—the danger that our statesmen, meaning well but embarrassed by their position, will be drawn into the middle course of a weak compromise; a compromise which will solve nothing, but embroil everything. The plan recommended by Mr. Caird's high authority, as a practical agriculturist, fulfils in a remarkable manner the conditions of such a settlement. The inducements which he holds out to landlords to grant leases would be simply inappreciable when weighed against the reasons which would still remain, from their point of view, for refusing them; and what would be the value of leases without some guarantee against an indefinite rise of rent? But while his plan would wholly fail to give a sense of security to the tenant, it would be very effectual in hampering the action of the landlord. What landlord would care to take an active part in working his estate when he could only do so by passing his transactions with his tenants through the ordeal of public advertisement in leading newspapers, and waiting for the expiration of a five years' notice to quit before getting possession of his land? Of two things one. The material development of the country may, on plausible grounds, be entrusted to the initiative either of landlord or of tenant. There is something to be said for both plans. The landlord has naturally the advantage of the tenant-farmer at least of the Irish tenant-farmer as he now exists-in enterprise and command of capital. On the other hand, enterprise and capital may, as others think, be developed in a far