MR BRIGHT ON THE LAND LAWS.

Waikato Times, Volume XVIII, Issue 1525, 13 April 1882, Page 4

MR BRIGHT ON THE LA ND LAWS.

In tne^urse. of, a speech l delivered at Birmingnam 'recently Mr Bright said — Among the farmers aud amongprofeßsional MA' eVery where there is a 'sense- at this Wnhent ih'at the land question must be ideMt'With, and ' that in dealing honestty with it', -wcliile the great interests of the great 'hotly 6f the people will be served the true interest of the holders of lanti (! will also be served. We watit two things only,' Ijh e first that land may be bought and sbld freely as other property. You go into a shop and buy anything over the counter, and there is not even a memorandum. You pay the money ; you, take away your purchase.' You' go to a fair or a market and you buy a horse or a farmer bu^s a beast. The' transaction hasj perhaps,' no matter for examination more than a few minutes, 1 and, in many cases, there is not even so much as a receipt given. If you go to ' the Liverpool Exchange or the Manchester Kxchauge yon find tliere tens or hundreds of thousands of pounds being bought and 'in' a single day. A mstn 'makes a note* In his note book and there is an end of it! 1 ' ''How 1 conies it that yon cannot buy a pirice 1 of land without some intricate arrangements, < without paper or parchment statements that you can hardly read. , ,and % have not the hope of being able*' to understand? It is -the coimnone&t thing in the world. I have don,e it twice myself the last three or four 'yfears in taking a deed drawn up by an intim'ate'personal friend of mine. He did it according to' the best mode of his art, and then I had to ask him to put down on a single piece of paper what the deed contained, because I could not possibly understand it. Now I have to look at that she^t of pnp"v. ? Tt has about as muclv in it as you put in a letter. I have to ldbk" ' at that to see what ' this deed means, because I am perfectly certain that unless I went tin ough a very minute legal education, which I <un not disposed to do at my time of life, I should never understand it. Well, now, wli.lt you want is to get rid of all that. It does not exist in other uonnti ics. It does not exist in the United States, or Canada, or the Australian colonies, or in Fiance, and why should it exist in this country ? r l he lawyers, you know, are a very pou 01 f ul party to do battle with. But e\en they will come to see that it will be bettei for them to/have a change Then we want another thing besides free buying aud selling. Long after a man is dead the dead hand has hold of the estate, and directs what shall be done with it and what shall not be done with it. So perfectly monstrous and intolerable a &lnw you would suppose could not have la ted for any length of time, and yet it haa laited in this country foi a good number ot > oars, some gonei ations, and has pi oduced an amount ot evil wldch none of us ever can imagine, I believe that ' our agiioultuin.l population, our labouring population in agriculture, would have been infinitely better oft than they have been in our existing system. And so would hnve been, 1 think, oui landowners, who would not, as they arc now, be, eripplinjj, mortal) "ing, suul embarrassing, and causing all kinds of rtiJiiculties, and afiaid of the influx of Americau coin and cattle, afraid of the cloutl- that ohstiuuts the .sunlight. If thik' state of tlimm had not existed I believe they avouUl have been free men, and their interests is as ilirect as the inteicst of the public in the entire abolition of this system. I am of opinion that when the Government comes to deal with this question, the wUe course will be to deal with it— l take Lord Derby's words— in a large and thorough 1 eform of it. It is a question ot some difficulty, and it will want a good deal of legal examination in dealing with. But my own hope, if the Government does before long bring forward any broad measure of this kind, is that the general feeling of the country will be entirely for it, and that the country gentlemen themselves the great squires, and great propiictors will feel that at last there is coming a day of liberation even for them and their families.