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That jumps, and that flings,
From side to side dashing,
When thrown from a net
To choke on the sand.
He indeed was a fish,
Bright in all brightest colours
That ocean can give,-
And which it required
The whole tribe of Ue
To drag to the shore
In the Bay of Kaiwaka.
It was Te Aramonna

Who so shook and dragged
The main post of our fortress,
That he drew it out,

And thus dragged forth
Te Kuru-o-te-Marama.
Alas! alas! alas!
Te Kuru-o-te-Marama,
Now the companion

Of Mars-and the stars-
Alas! alas! alas!

I will venture to add a portion of one other lament, in explanation of the opinions held by the New Zealanders in relation to the state of the dead.

A chief named Whakatere was the relative of a great chief named Paekawa, and was one of his greatest warriors. Whakatere having, with a number of his tribe, fallen in battle, his widow, Karanga, composed a lament for him, which ended as follows:

The ear-drop of jade,
The great tribal treasure,
Has been now reft away,
From the house of Paekawa,—
As the omens foretold.

We beheld, and lo! twice

The red lurid flames

Leapt forth from the summit

Of Mount Tongariro.

The signals and signs,
From the dead of your tribe,
That the road was all clear

To the realms where

The spirits await

you.

For those who had fallen

In the former fight,

On the wide-spreading plains

Of Okahukura,

Were but the brave scouts

Who went first on the march,

The unknown track to explore
For you and your men,

Who now sleep in death.

Alas! Whakatere !

Alas!

G. GREY.

THE LAND QUESTION.

PART II.-FEUDAL TENURES IN ENGLAND.

IN my last article I pointed out, as the root of the wrongs of Ireland, as regards the land question, the fact that when, after the Rebellion, English tenures were nominally introduced into Ireland, security of tenure was not given to the peasantry. I showed that the manorial system introduced was such only in name; that where manors were introduced, they were counterfeit manors; that the Irish peasant farmers were treated not as copyholders but as if they had no rights of tenure at all. But I tried to show, further, that their rights being ignored by Irish land-law and landlords for two centuries did not alter the fact of their existence. Descendants or successors of them still to this day are struggling against the attempt of Irish landlords and land-law to treat them as what they are not-as mere commercial tenants under contracts. And the conclusion I pointed out was that now, at this eleventh hour, Mr. Gladstone has had, it would seem, the task imposed upon him by the British nation of inventing two new tenures, one to meet the needs of the commercial farming tenants-and the other to fit the far more difficult and delicate case of the peasant hereditary holders.

Now it will readily be seen that it would be a very important point gained, if it could be shown that what justice obliges us to do for Ireland, can be done upon principles recognised in England, and in such a way as to strengthen, instead of in any the least degree to undermine the rights of property in England. And this is what I think a careful review of the history of the relations of the English people to the English land must show.

For in the first place, as to the commercial class of tenant farmers, it will confirm what I have before pointed out, that tenant farmers in England who have no leases and no sufficient covenants to protect them, stand in need of the same protection (though not perhaps to the same degree) as Irish tenant farmers.

And in the second place, it will show that even the recognition of peasant tenures, which I have said, in justice, imply something approaching to security of tenure, need not shock the nerves of English landowners, inasmuch as the peasant class in England have already had that security of tenure which is now about to be given to the peasant tenants of Ireland. So that there is, in fact, no class of tenants in England who can have any possible right to rise up and say, "What you are doing for the peasant tenant of Ireland you must do also for me."

The object which I shall set before me in this review will be to show that after the Norman Conquest of England the mass of the agricultural population of England were landholders—not owners of land, but feudal tenants with security of tenure-and then to trace how feudal tenures and feudal principles have, in English history, gradually been supplanted by commercial tenures and commercial principles,-how, in fact, a nation of feudal tenants has been transformed into a nation whose land is owned in commercial ownership by one class, farmed under commercial contracts by another, and tilled by a third-all these classes being commercial classes, and the last two being landless.

I am well aware from experience what a danger one runs, in attempting to traverse so wide a field, of making too rapid generalisations, and reading one's own theories into history. But it seems to me that the review I am attempting is one which at this juncture ought to be made; and if I fail to get at the main facts, or unconsciously mistake them, I trust that some abler hand may be provoked by my failure to supply my deficiencies.

The first step will be to get a sort of bird's-eye view of the manorial system as it actually existed after the Conquest, and before the devastations of the Black Death-an index map, as it were, of a

manor.

Such a map I find ready to hand in the Record Commissioners' edition of the statute book, under the title of "Extenta Manerii." It is a common form "for extending or surveying a manor," and was used most likely as a guide to the inquiries which were made whenever a manor fell into the wardship of the king, or when, on the lord of the manor's death, or otherwise, reliefs or other dues fell into royal hands.

This "Extent" directs inquiry to be made into the value of the lord's demesne lands, including the parks and demesne woods which he might improve at his pleasure; also of his rights in the foreign woods, pastures, &c., in which "other men have common." With respect to the holdings of the manorial tenants, the following inquiries were to be made :

“FREEHOLDERS.-Of freeholders, how many there be, and what lands and tenements, and what fees they hold, and by what services; whether by socage or knight service or otherwise, and what they are worth, and pay yearly of rent of assize, and who hold by charter and who not, and who by old tenure and who by new feoffment. Also which of the said free tenants do follow the court of the county and which not, and what and how much falleth to the lord after the death of such free tenants.

"CUSTOMARY TENANTS.-Also of customary tenants, how many there be and how much land every one of them holdeth: what works and customs he doth, and what the works and customs of every tenant be worth yearly, and how much rent of assize he paid yearly besides the works and customs, and which of them may be taxed at the will of the lord and which not.

"COTTAGES AND CURTILAGES.-Also of cottagers, what cottages and curtilages they hold, and by what service and how much they do pay by the year for all their cottages and curtilages."

From this "extent" of a manor we get a list of the three classes of feudal landholders:

1. The Lord of the Manor.

2. The Freeholders of the Manor.

3. The Customary Tenants and Cottagers of the Manor. Having thus got an index map of a manor and this list of tenants, the next step is to fix its position in the map of the whole country, and to fill in roughly the figures of its measurement, the number of its tenants, and the value and terms of their holdings. This done, I shall point out that none of these tenants-the lord of the manor, the freeholder, or the customary tenant-were in any true sense absolute owners, according to the modern notion of commercial ownership, but that all three classes were tenants paying rents in money or services originally equal to the annual value of their holdings and subject to their rents, enjoying practical security and fixity of tenure.

Mr. Froude has somewhere said that it has often seemed to him as if History were like a child's box of letters, with which we can spell any word we please. This is not altogether true of economic history. It is more like a child's dissected map-the pieces will not fit together unless they are the right pieces in the right place.

Let me take two examples, important to this inquiry ::First. William the Conqueror is said to have divided England into a certain number of knights' fees, from each of which a knight's service was due. It also appears that his military arrangements were such as to enable him to muster an army of 60,000 men.

Now some chroniclers, followed by Blackstone and Hallam1 and a host of other historians, have treated these two facts as loose letters, and made them spell out a third fact, viz. ;-that there were 60,000 knights' fees in England. But, treating them as the pieces of a dissected map, the two facts will not fit together in this way; for a knight's fee contained, according to the lowest estimate, 680 acres," and 1,200 acres is an average probably much under the mark. So

(1) Hall., i. 121 n. "William the Conqueror, it is said, distributed this kingdom into 60,000 parcels of nearly equal value, from each of which the service of a soldier was due." (No authority given.)

Blacks., i. 410. "All the lands are divided into what were called knights' fees, in number 60,000, and for every knight's fee a knight, or soldier (miles) was bound to attend the king in his wars for forty days in a year. By this means the king

had, without expense, an army of 60,000 men ready at his command.”

(2) Co. Litt., p. 69; Blackstone, ii. 62.

(3) A knight's fee was reckoned as equal to £20 per annum of socage land, which, at 4d. per acre (the value of land in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries), would give 1,200 acres as the average contents of a knight's fee of cultivated land. If part were under cultivation and part waste the area would be still larger.

that 60,000 knights' fees would contain 40,800,000 acres at least, and more probably 72,000,000 acres. Now the whole acreage of England is only 32,590,429 acres, and from five to ten million acres. of this are uncultivated wastes, moors, and mountains, in respect of which knightly service could hardly be expected. So much for the story of the 60,000 knights' fees! Its inconsistency, however, need not make us doubt the facts out of which it has grown, which seem to rest upon almost contemporary authority.1

2

Again:-According to the Domesday Survey, the land of England was parcelled out amongst 1,400 tenants in capite, and 7,871 mesne tenants, so that, adding these two numbers together, there would seem to have been, roughly, 9,000 or 10,000 manors in England. It curiously happens that there were just about this number of parishes in England. After the Plague of 1349 there were 8,600 parishes in England, and we know that the number was lessened by the Plague. Now if these two facts might be treated as loose letters it would be very easy to make them spell what Blackstone states as the most likely theory of the origin of parishes, viz., that the lords of manors built the parish churches, and that the boundary of the manors gave the boundary to the parishes. But, dissecting the totals into counties, the figures do not correspond so conveniently. Let us take a few counties :

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Here again, however, the numbers neither of the parishes nor of the manors are at fault, but only the inference so easily drawn from them. The number of parishes rests upon reliable evidence, and so also does the number of manors. I may observe, in confirmation of the latter, that the number of acres in each county divided by the number of manors gives an average area for the manors in the separate counties which accords well with what one might expect, being smallest where the population was largest and land most valuable. Thus the area of the manors in the counties lying between Dorsetshire and Leicestershire, and on the east of them, varies from one to two thousand acres, and the acreage of the manors increases with the distance north and west from this the most populous district.

(1) The original authority seems to be Ordericus Vitalis, Bk. IV., c. vii., who says :— "The land was distributed into knights' fees, with such order that the realm of England should always possess a force of 60,000 men ready at any moment to obey the king's commands as his occasion required." This writer was born in 1075, and died about 1142. (2) Ellis's "Introduction to the Domesday Book,” ii. p. 511.

(3) Blackstone, i. p. 114.

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