LAND 269
Owners should be cultivators.
while at the same time giving his personal labour and skill, his income may be considerably smaller, but it will be to the same extent the more secure. It is entirely a question for each person to solve for himself, and it would be no national loss it a certain number of farmers were to elect to purchase farms of only one-sixth the extent of those which they occupy as tenants, and to cultivate them with their own labour. Or, if the present tenants should be reluctant to exchange their higher incomes, subject to the greater risk, for smaller but more secure incomes, it cannot be said that there is any national gain in their occupying land which in the hands of small owners would yield crops as large and at no greater cost, though with a different distribution of profits.
What is true in the argument appears to be this. It would be a distinct loss to the nation if landlords were to withdraw their capital from the land before other persons are prepared to put as much in. At present tenants in general cannot put in more capital, because they have not got more. They could not, therefore, bay their present farms. But they could buy farms of smaller extent, and on these raise crops fully as good. And if there were enough of other persons prepared to buy the remainder of the land, and to cultivate it themselves with equal skill, there would be equal advantage in their doing so. But, since skill in farming needs both education and practice, there are not enough of persons as yet possessed of these qualifications and also of the needful capital. Hence any sudden break in the present system of tenure by landlord and tenant would be hurtful to the country, leading to abstraction of capital, and worse cultivation and less produce. But a gradual process of change, permitting all persons who had capital (however small) and aptitude, to become owners and cultivators, would be a national benefit, since it would not diminish the capital employed, but would render it on the contrary more productive through the stimulus of being applied wholly for the benefit of the cultivator himself.
There is no doubt that the system of division of capital and rights between landlord and tenant is intrinsically bad. Neither is full owner, nor can do even with his own share exactly what is best for himself and the public. The landlord is generally short of means with which to make permanent improvements; in any case he can make none without the tenant's sanction, and of course he makes none unless the tenant agrees to pay him at least 3 but more often 5 per cent. The tenant, on the other hand, having only a temporary interest, spends nothing except when he sees a certainty of being repaid before the end of his term. Land, however, yields only slow returns, and much is thus left undone because the full profit cannot be reaped till after a lapse of years. The system of leases, universal in Scotland, palliates but does not remedy the mischief. It is recognized that the tenancy, usually of nineteen years, is in practice divided into three equal portions. The first is spent in restoring the exhaustion of the soil by the preceding tenant, the second gives a full profit, the third is (if no renewal of lease be expected) devoted to the gradual withdrawal of capital, with corresponding reduction of fertility. Compensation for unexhausted outlay is an excellent principle; but it has not yet been found so trustworthy in application as to afford sufficient security to induce the continuous application of capital till the end of the lease. It is very doubtful whether any form of legislative interference, passing beyond a mere enactment of equitable presumptions in absence of express contract, would improve the relation between the two parties, because such enactments when not agreeable to both parties can always be indirectly broken through. It is only cultivation by the actual owners that gives at once the freedom and security necessary for full development of the capacity of the land and the adoption of the results of modern science.
Illustration from Ireland.
The history of land tenure in Ireland illustrates these principles, and they in turn afford a standard by which to judge recent legislation. Leaving out of view a certain number of estates on which the landlord supplied, in addition to the land, the capital represented by buildings, drains, &c., in the greater part of Ireland he supplied nothing. The tenant, under a general custom of permanence of holding, in many cases did a great deal; but, as the custom was not enforced by law, the occasional seizure of his improvements caused a sentiment of alarm and distrust which seriously limited them. The Act of 1870 aimed at giving him additional security by not merely recognizing his right to compensation for his own outlay if he should be removed, but by imposing a fine on the landlord if he should evict a tenant. But, as it avoided to prohibit the landlord from raising the rent, the insecurity was just as great as before, while the introduction of a legal relation between the two parties led many landlords to restrict more than ever their expenditure on improvements. The Act of 1881, therefore, proceeded to the necessary consequence of fixing the rent, by means of a court of valuation, and of giving to the tenant a positive right to permanent occupancy, subject to a revaluation every fifteen years. But it is obvious that this scheme also, though valuable as an immediate palliative, fails to have the elements of a permanent settlement. The landlord will be less and less inclined to spend on improvements; and even if he desired to do so the tenant can, and in nearly every case will, prevent him, for the plain reason that he will not desire the landlord's share in the joint property to be increased. Yet the tenant will on his part be impeded from full confidence in making improvements, even when he has the means, lest at the next valuation his own outlay may be valued against him. The interests are no longer joint but conflicting. Thus far the remedial legislation has only succeeded in reaching the stage in which Prussia stood before the reforms of Stein and Hardenberg were proposed, when nobles and serfs had both certain legal rights, which neither could attack, but which neither could convert into independent property. But the Prussian method of reform by apportioning the land to each party in absolute property, but in fractions representing their respective interests, could not be applied in Ireland, both because the holdings are in general too small to bear partition, and because the landlords have not, as in Prussia, been in the habit of cultivating their own domain, and they would, therefore, again introduce the vicious system of letting to tenants even that part which might be assigned to them in unencumbered fee. The state will, therefore, have to become the intermediary of transfer, but the better course would probably have been that it should at the first have assumed this function on the over-rented and ill-managed estates, leaving those which were fairly rented and liberally managed unaffected by legislation which they did not need.
The legal basis of the recent land legislation in Ireland is, however, as it was in Prussia, the recognition that prescriptive possession, even under a title of mere tenancy, confers a right to continuance of such possession. The same principle formed the basis of the conversion of copyholds in England from being tenancies at will into tenancies in perpetuity. It might justly be applied still in cases in Great Britain in which tenancies have continued without change for a long period. Especially it might be applied to check the system of "clearances" in the Highlands, where the right of the crofters to continue in possession rests on the original community of possession by the tribe, and is fortified by an almost immemorial continuance of possession by each family.
