recognise any right in individuals to make themselves an impediment to the most beneficial use of it for that end. Wherever might is not accepted as a sufficient basis of right, the justification of private property in land has rested on the theory that most is made of the land for the good of the community by giving that full play to the stimulus of self-interest which is given by private ownership. But this theory, though it has a foundation in truth, is by no means absolutely true; and the limits of its truth ought to be the limits of its practical application. The self-interest of the owners of land, under perfect freedom, coincides with the general interest of the community up to a certain point, but not wholly; there are cases in which it draws in a totally opposite direction. Not even in the point of view of Production is there a complete coincidence between the private interest of landowners and the public interest. In that of Distribution, whether the institution of private property in land should include the concession, to enrich a class, of all that annual increase of wealth which the mere progress of capital and population, in a prosperous community, showers down upon landlords without any exertion or sacrifice of their own, is a question not raised by Mr. Leslie, and which, for the present, we are content to leave undiscussed. But the self-interest of landlords is far from a sufficient security for their turning the land to the best account, even as to its productive powers.

"It has been urged," says Mr. Leslie, "even by economists of eminence, that the best security the public can obtain for the good management of land is the personal interest of its private holders. The desire of wealth, it is urged, must impel the possessors of land, like the owners of capital in trade, to make the best commercial and productive use they can of their possessions. Political economy, I must affirm, countenances no such assumption. The desire of wealth is far from being a productive impulse under all circumstances; it is, on the contrary, sometimes a predatory one; and the fundamental assumption of political economy with respect to it is, that men desire to get wealth with the least possible trouble, exertion, and sacrifice; that besides wealth, they desire ease, pleasure, social position, and political power; and that they will combine all the gratification they can of their other desires with the acquisition of wealth. The situation of the inheritor of a large landed estate is entirely different from that of the trader, of whom (trained to habits of business, exposed to competition, and influenced, not only by the desire of gain, but by the fear of being driven from the market altogether by better producers) it is true that the best security the public can have for the good management of his capital is his own private interest. It is as contrary to political economy as to common sense to assume that a rich sinecure makes its possessor industrious and improving; and the landholders of this country are the holders, not only of rich sinecures, but of sinecures the value of which tends steadily, and often rapidly, to increase without any exertion on their part. . . . . The interest of the proprietors of land is, according to the assumption their own conduct compels us to make, to get as much, not only of money, but of amusement, social consideration, and political influence as they can, making as little sacrifice as they can in return for any of those advantages, in the shape of leases to their tenants, the improvement of their estates, or even residence upon them

when other places are more agreeable. That they are frequently guided solely by their interest in this sense is borne out by notorious facts-by absenteeism, by the frequent absence of all improvement on the part of the landlord, and the refusal of any security to the tenant, by the mischievous extent of the preservation of game, and the extension of deer-parks over what once was cultivated land. The single circumstance that tenancy from year to year, a tenure incompatible with good agriculture, is the commonest tenure both in England and Ireland, affords positive proof that the interest of the landlord is no security to the public for the good management of the land in the absence of all interference of law." (Pp. 123-6.)

"Wealth," the author says elsewhere (p. 88) "is not the predominant interest of the most powerful classes."

But though the self-interest of landlords frequently operates to frustrate, instead of promoting, the interest which the community has in the most effective use of the productive powers of the soil, there is another party concerned whose self-interest does work in that useful direction; and that is, the actual cultivator of the soil, if he be either a small proprietor, or a tenant on conditions which secure to him the full fruits of his labour and outlay :

"He is a farmer by profession, with the habits of one, and exposed to much competition; he has his livelihood to make, and he would, of course, like to make his fortune too, by farming. The public can, therefore, count upon the tenant doing his best by the land, if he is sure of deriving the benefit. But if he has no prospect of doing so, it becomes, on the contrary, his interest to labour only for the present, and to employ his savings and leisure anywhere rather than upon the permanent improvement of his farm. And that he cannot obtain the requisite security from contract alone is evident, both from what has been said of the interest and conduct of landlords in the matter, and from the fact. . . . . that the Courts and the Legislature have found it necessary to interpose law after law to secure the property in their own improvements to the tenants." (P. 126.)

It is a great step in advance, and a signal triumph of political necessity over inveterate prejudice, that Parliament is now passing a bill which recognises that in Ireland at least, security of tenure is indispensable to enlist the self-interest of the occupier of land on the side of good cultivation, and that this security cannot, in Ireland, be trusted to the operation of contract, but must be provided by law. There is something amusingly naïf in the form in which this interference of legislation represents itself to the minds of many who, with considerable reluctance, find themselves forced to support it. According to them, it is a deeply to be regretted, but unavoidable, setting aside of what they call the principles of political economy, in consequence of insuperable difficulties. May I venture to suggest that there are no such principles of political economy as those which they imagine themselves to be violating? The principles of political economy, as of every other department of knowledge, are a different thing from its practical precepts. The same principles require different precepts, wherever different means are required for the same ends. If the interest of landlords does not afford sufficient security

to tenants, it is not contrary, but in the strictest conformity, to the teachings of political economy, to provide other security instead. The absolute power of landlords over the soil is what political economy really condemns; and condemns in England as well as in Ireland, though its economic mischiefs are not, in England, so flagrant and unqualified.

Mr. Leslie's volume is partly a republication of essays which have appeared during the last three years in periodicals. But they are as fresh, and as germane to the present state of the question, as if they had been written yesterday; and they are supplemented by others which bring up the information and discussion to the latest date. They all relate to some of the aspects of the question of Land Tenure, and may be classed under three heads: the land question as it is in Ireland, the land question as it is in England, and the agricultural economy of those continental countries which the author has had the means of personally observing. We cannot attempt to give an adequate view of the contents of the volume; but in the hope of directing readers to the work itself, we will touch cursorily on a few of the points on which most stress is laid.

The view which Mr. Leslie takes of the condition of Irelandand Mr. Leslie is an Irishman, of Ulster, who has studied the operation of economic laws in that country at first hand, and on the spot -is at once unfavourable and encouraging. Encouraging as regards the capabilities of the country, agricultural and even manufacturing, and the capacity of the people for thriving under a more tolerable land system; but unfavourable, as he considers much of the improvement alleged to have taken place, and to be still in progress, under the present system, in consequence of the famine and the emigration, to be merely imaginary. He denies the virtue either of emigration, or of the other favourite English prescription-the consolidation of farms—as a cure, or even much of a palliation, for Irish poverty. As a matter of fact, he asserts that the increase of wages which has taken place, considerable as it appears in comparison with the former standard, is not much more than equivalent to the rise in the price of articles of consumption caused by the gold discoveries, and by the railways, which have everywhere so greatly increased the price of agricultural produce in what were once, from the inaccessibility of markets, the cheap regions of the world. As a matter of science, he justly criticises the sweeping generalisation which assumes that whatever reduces the supply of labourers must proportionally raise wages, without regard to the effect which, in certain economic conditions, even a small rise in the price of labour may produce on the demand. On this subject he has shown that there is room and need for a supplementary chapter or section in our treatises on political economy; and it is no blame to him if, in a volume of this character,

he rather points out the want than supplies it.' As far as Ireland is concerned, his opinion is, that the extensive substitution of pasture for tillage which has been taking place during the whole period of the emigration, and has been greatly facilitated by it, has curtailed the demand for labour in a proportion fully equal to the diminution of the supply. And the facts adduced, not only by Mr. Leslie, but by Professor Lyon Playfair, in his essay in Recess Studies, "On the Declining Production of Human Food in Ireland," show that this transformation and, in fact, supersession of rural industry, which at first only diminished the produce of tillage, but greatly increased the products of grazing farms, has now for some years decreased even the number of cattle, "through the want of winter keep, and what is worse, through a positive deterioration of the depastured soil," its fertilizing elements, instead of being restored to it, having been carried out of the country in the bodies of the exported cattle (p. 65). The single exception to the decline in the number of animals is sheep, the only farm product which increases in a soil abandoned to nature, and which, accordingly, has greatly increased in Ireland. The "decay of husbandmen" and diminution of the produce of agriculture has had its natural effect in the decay of the country town and the village; and Mr. Leslie draws a sad picture of the desolation of the poverty-stricken country towns, the eastern coast excepted, which has been saved by the trade with England. Even the rise of

(1) "The bargain of wages is a transaction between the individual employer and his men; what that employer can give depends on his own means and profits, and not on the sum of the funds in his own and other people's possession. . . . . The aggregate amount of the funds expendible as wages does not, given the number of labourers, determine the rate of wages at all. . . . Were only one labourer left in the country, would he earn as much as all the former labourers put together? Clearly not; unless he did as much work, and worked for all employers at once; for how else could the money be forthcoming to pay him? . . . If a single employer, or a few who could combine, had the entire amount, all the labour in the country which could not emigrate might be hired for its bare subsistence, whatever the rate in the power of the employer to give. Again, if the whole amount were, as it really is, very unequally shared among employers, the price of labour might be immeasurably lower than if it were equally shared just as, at an auction, the prices paid for things will probably be immensely higher if the purchasers have equal means, than if most of the money is in the hands of a few. If two bidders, for example, have each £50, one of them may have to spend his whole fifty to get half what he wants; but if one of them has but £5, and the other has £95, the latter may get all he wants for £5 5s." (Pp. 41, 87). Hence a very large emigration might take place, and yet the rise of wages be stopped at what the bulk of the employers of labour-in Ireland a very poor class-could afford to pay. "Although emigration may force employers either to pay more for labour or to forego it, it cannot enable them to pay more for it, as higher prices of produce will do; . . . it may, on the contrary, compel or determine them to diminish their outlay upon it, may force or induce them to relinquish enterprises already on foot, to forsake tillage for pasture, to emigrate themselves, and in various other ways to withdraw funds from the labour market. It may actually disable them from paying the same rate of wages as formerly, by withdrawing the strongest and most skilful hands from their employment; and again, in place of being the cause of a rise in the rate of wages, it may be the consequence of a fall." (P. 97.)

prices, seemingly so beneficial to the farmer, is, under the wretched land system of Ireland, often the very reverse. "Rising prices, in themselves, and unaccompanied by security, only imperil the position of the tenant farmer, by tempting the proprietor to sudden changes in the terms of the tenure, or in the tenancy itself." (P. 63.) And tenancy at will is more universally the rule at this moment than it has been for several generations. "The natural consequence has been that system of husbandry which so experienced a judge as Mr. Caird lately described as everywhere meeting his eye, save in Ulster and the eastern seaboard of the country. What the ground will yield from year to year at the least cost of time, labour, and money is taken from it.''

The consolidation of farms, from which so much was expected, and which so many Englishmen still honestly believe to be the panacea for Irish poverty, perversely resisted by a population which it would essentially benefit, has proved, no less than the emigration, a complete failure as regards the prosperity of the country.

"Mr. Brodrick, in one of the essays which the Irish land question has elicited from distinguished Englishmen, mentions with something of surprise, as a fact of which his inquiries in the island have convinced him, that fifteen and ten-acre farmers in Ireland pay a higher rent than larger farmers, with at least equal punctuality. The truth is that they generally produce more, and that the consolidation of farms means the diminution of crops, the extension of grazing, and, sooner or later, the exhaustion of the soil. The table in the note, taken from the last volume of Irish agricultural statistics, affords conclusive evidence that cultivation decreases, and grass, bog, and waste increase, in exact proportion to the size of farms. It may be true that not a few of the small holdings which have disappeared in recent years were, soil and situation considered, too diminutive; but they were so because the best land has been generally given to large grazing farms, and because the same error which has made landowners look with disfavour on small farms, has led them to drive them to the worst ground and the worst situations, and to limit unduly both the duration of their tenure and the amount of land left to them. The consolidation of farms, in place of being an advance, has involved a palpable retrogression in Irish husbandry and in its productiveness." (P. 67.)

Since the immense produce raised from the barrenest soil in the small farms of Belgium, and the higher rent they actually pay, compared with large farms, have been made generally known in England, attempts have been made by Lord Rosse, Lord Dufferin, and others, to make out that the experience of Flanders, from difference of climate and other causes, is not applicable to Ireland. Mr. Leslie maintains, on the contrary, that the success of the petite culture in Flanders has been attained in spite of great disadvantages, not only of soil but of climate; that the British islands have much greater natural advantages than Flanders, for the success of five-acre farms; that "there is hardly any part of Europe, save England, better fitted for farms of the smallest description than the greater part of Ireland, including its waste lands; and even its waste lands could be made highly productive