OUR LAND LAWS: WHAT SHOULD BE THEIR BASIS?

Evening Star, Issue 4015, 8 January 1876, Page 1 (Supplement)

OUR LAND LAWS: W HAT SHOULD BE THEIR BASIS?

By C. W. Purnell.

(Continued ) I had intended to treat of the land systems of other European countries than those mentioned, but I find it would occupy too much space to do so, and it is unnecessary for the purposes of the argument. The Commune, the Saxon and Frankish modes of holding land, and the feudal system, are the keys to the principal land tenures prevailing in Europe, and with them in his hands, the student can gather for himself a competent knowledge of the subject, and learn how it has come to pass that in England and elsewhere, one man is lord of a vast tract of country, while another has not an inch of land to call his own, and is only permitted to dwell on God’s tree earth by sufferance, as it were.

Let us sum up and frame a general conclusion. Leaving Russia aside, the characteristics of the seed from which the present land organisations of the principal countries of. Europe, 'with their several branchings, have grown, may be described as the recognition of the principle that the land possessed by a community belongs to that community as a body, and it, for the sake of convenience, portions of it are given to individuals, the gift is made on condition that they shall guard it from invasion and render peculiar services to the State, which, if left unfulfilled, will entail forfeiture of their domain. The military protection of the st il was the central spring of the feudal system ; but the power which the system, with its compact machinery, vested in the gentry gradually reduced all rural residents of a lower grade of society to a state of dependence, more or less servile, upon their social superiors j while the latter, step by step, converted their military tenures into freeholds, and got rid of the peculiar burdens imposed upon the land. By the days of the Commonwealth the large landholders in England had reduced their feudal burdens to a mere remnant, and taking advantage of the times, cleverly contrived to shift their money dues on to the shoulders of the mercantile class, then just springing into life, but too weak, and perhaps not sagacious enough, to repel the imposition. The latter, indeed, have since amply revenged themselves j but as for the poor in means, they may truly say that, if the old knights and barons chastised them with whips, their commercial masters have chastised them with scorpions. In the days of William the Roman, Brute force trod upon the necks of the poor ; now, it is Brute Wealth. The feudal dues Laving been shunted off, the landholders got military tenures formally abolished in the reign of Charles 11., when they found themsel ires, instead of being military tenants, hereditary masters of the soil. In Russia, the right of the entire community to the use and possession of the soil exists in its naked form j .and it has been left for New Zealand and other British Colonies to start on their career with the motto emblazoned on their shields, that any man with sufiiciert money in his purse, however basely he may have got it, shall be entitled co buy the absolute dominion, of as much land as he pleases, unshackled by legal burdens, whose aesthetic glories he may rigidly prohibit all other human beings from enjoying, and whose material benefits he may permit to lie wholly undeveloped, even though thousands of his fellow-crea-tures be starving. One can understand a man who distinguished himself at Cressy or Agiucourt—a Marlborough or a Wellington—receiving an absolute grant of land as a gift from the nation in acknowledgment of his public services. A Nelson, preserving his country s liberties—perhaps her national existence—and surrounding her with a corona of naval glory, might well be rewarded with a portion of the soil which he had defended at the risk of his own life to keep for himself and his heirs for ever. If an eminent statesman, or any man who performs great services to the State, be endowed in this mapper, a cogent reason for the distinction is apparent, although, even in such cases, the utmost care ought to be taken not to infringe too far upon the integrity of the public domain. But why should Mr John Jones, who would laugh at the idea of any man sacrificing himself for the public welfare as ridiculous, and only credible to unsophisticated youths, whose life has been one Jong devotion to the acqusition of money, be permitted to appropriate to himself forty or fifty, or one hundred thousand acres of land, or any greater area which he has means to buy, more especially when there are thousands of men in the country he inhabits far better, morally and intellectually, than himself, and who, for that very reason, have failed to heap up as large apileofwealth as he has done! Whathas been the career of three-fourths of the rich men of the Colony 1 Js it npt because they are hard-hearted, careless of right and wrong, willing to seize every occasion to add to their goldep store, however much their fellows play suffer thereby, it all being “ in the wav of business,” that they grow rich 1 Bad they been better men, they would have remained poor. Why then should the Riiate reward them for their selfishness 1 (To he continued .)