Something Like a Landlord.

Thames Star, Volume XII, Issue 3969, 17 September 1881, Page 1

Something Like a Landlord.

Ad acquaintance of mine, Mr Smith, of the Seilly Isles, has (1875) recently died.. Mr Smith possessed,exceptional and unusual powers in those islands, lind did not abuse them. I think that at such a time as this an account of such a tnau aod his doings may not be unwelcome as evidence that a landlord is not necessarily as pernicious a being as some people appear to tbink. It used to be said before the American war that masters who were kind to their slaves were the ' worst euemies that the slates had. They were made the apology for a detestable institution. I have beard the same made to good husbands by advaned advocates of the rights of women. On similar grounds a bad opinion may be formed of Mr Smith, and now at this distance of time I do not mean to trouble you at any length about him. Good actions do to some extent serve as salt to keep a man's memory fresh, but the world is for the living, and not for the dead. A very few words.on Mr Smith are all to which I shall ask you to listen. He was an advanced .Kadical, a .believer in Bentham. "The greatest happiness of the greatest number was the rule of his life. Besides bis property in Scilly, he had an estate at Berkhampstcad in Hertforshire. At Berkhampstead there is an extensive common, one of the few great commons remaining in England, a free expanse of grass and forest, much valued by the country side and by all the neighborhood. A djoining the common stretches the property of' a greit nobleman. And the. common troubled his repose as . Naboth's vineyard troubled King Ahab. ■ As belonging to the people, it seemed to him to belong to nobody. It was the haunt of vagrants ; it encouraged idleness ; it gave poachers an opportunity of shooting his pheasants. On iioe moral grounds he thought it would be to the public advantage if the occasion of so much disorder was enclosed between his own park pailings. He doubted the result of an appeal to law, but a plea was found which he hoped might sustain him if he was once in possession. He fenced the common in, and he left the people of Berkhampstead to find theirremedy. The smaller land owners, as he expected, did not like to quarrel with their powerful neighbor. The poor, who were the most injured, had the least means of protect* ing themselves, and Berkhampstead Common would have gone the way of a hundred others except for Mr Smith. He heard what had been done. He perceived that the advantage would be with the party in actual possession. Instead of bringing an action against the noble lord, he brought a hundred and fifty navvies one dark night down from London. When morning came fifteen hundred yards of iron railings were lying flat upon the ground. They were never-set up again, and Berkbampstead Common still belongs to you and to me, and to auy one who chooses to enjoy himself there. But now for what Mr Smith did in Scilly. The Scilly Isles are a prolongation of the granite backbone of Devonshire aud Cornwall, and arc, in fact, but a cluster of granite hill tops standiug out of the water. The largest island is from four to six miles

round. Three others are about half that size ; the rest, some hundreds in number, are little more than rocks. Before the Reformation, Pcilly was occupied by monks, who had a fancy for such places. When the monks went it became a pirates' nest, and then a haunt of privateers and smugglers. After the great war it sank in condition. The population was large, as it always is where there is no motive for prudence. The people were miserably poor; they livid in squalid hovels, with half an acre or an aero of ground, which they manured with sea weed. They eked out their livelihood by fishing, pilo'ing, and occasional smuggling ventures. They had no schools, but they had publichouses; and spirits were cheap where customs duties were so easily evaded. The Crown was the owner of these islands. Circumstances, aboutforty years . ggo, induced Mr Smith to take a long leaße of them. As sole lessee he became absolute master there; and if anyone i wished to see what can be 'done; by one man of no extraordinary abilities, but with a strong will and a resolute purpose to do good, let him pay Scilly a visit. Mr Smith at once altered the small tenures so as to make improvement possible. He broke up the small holdings and combined them into farms on which a family might be maintained in decency. He provided work at competent wages for those who were deprived of their potato j patches. He drained. He enclosed the fields. He rebuilt the cottages in a form { fit for human beings. He set up boat-.j yards, and organised the fishing business. H© stopped drunkenness with a high hand. Incorrigible blackguards he shipped off to the mainland. He built chapels and endowed them. He built "schools and provided teachers for them. The young lads were trained for the sea, and with such effects, that when last I enquired I was told that the Scilly pilots had the best name of all the pilots at the mouth of the channel, and that there was not a Scilly boy in the merchant service, above twenty one, who was a sailor before the mast; all were masters or petty officers. The soil, properly cultivated, began to produce unheard of crops. The soft, warm climate, brings vegetation forward early, and the Scilly gardeners are now making their fortunes by supplying spring vegetables to the London, market. Throughput the compass of the: British Islands you will not find an equal number of people, or an equal area, on an average so well clothed, so well fed, so well lodged, so well educated. In the largest island there is but one constable, and he is the only person there who has -nothing to do. The whole place wears, or did when I was there, an air of quiet industry, prosperity, order, and discipline. , These results Mr Smith arrived at by the arbitrary exercise of his power as a landlord. He looked to the end rather than the means. He desired to promote the greatest happiness of the people dependent upon him, and be took the readiest road to his object. He found .Scilly a rabbit warren of paupers. He made it a thriving community of industrious men and women. .If boys and girls wanted to marry, and could not show that they were in a condition to support a family, he told them he had no room for them ; they must wait till they had money • in the savings' bank, or they must move off to the main land. He was a king on a small scale, j Within the law his authority was absolute, and he used it not for himself, but for hif? subjects. He made uo money in Scilly. He told me a few years before his death that he bad laid out mere than he had ever received. He was a. thrifty raan in his own habits, and- had Few luxuries but :his garden. His rents he spent upon the people, and when he died he left the islands treble in mere money value. "There is prosperity of ai kind, \ undoubtedly," said a philosophical Radical to me, " but it is a paternal Government, and I detest paternal Government." Paternal Government may be detestable where you have the wrong sort of a father. Men like Mr Smith are rare; but I am none the less thankful when a raW chance gives the right man the right opportunity. If the islands had been as free as Mr Mill would have " desired to see them, and if they had been all animated with the most determined spirit of self-improvement, they could not have accomplished iv a hundred years what Mr Smith accomplished for them in one gent-ration. He valued liberty as much as any man when liberty aeant resistance to what was wrong. He was less patient of liberty to resist what was clearly and indisputably right. He had his foibles. He was the wicked man of the islands. You know the story of the wicked man. It is so old that perhaps I ought not to repeat it. A clergyman of the Church of England had taken a friend's duty in a parish where there was a despotic squire who did not allow the service to be commenced before his arrival. The clergyman, not knowing the custom, began, at the proper hour with the opening words of the English Liturgy, " Wheh: the'wicked man turnetli away,. &a." The clerk started up in his seat and said, " I beg yottr pardon, sir, he is not come yet." This was the rult) in Scilly when I was there. The Lord of the Isles, as Mr Smith was called, was supreme in Church as well as State. He is gone now, Another king reigns in his stead. I trust he'may prove a,wicked man too, like his uncle.—" The Lauded Gentry." —Ebotoe.