Commission that only on large estates, managed by agents and lawyers, could these powers be made available. How little was done under them is seen from the late Lord Salisbury's "Report of a Committee of the House of Lords," in 1873. "Speaking not only of drainage, but of all kinds of improvements," only one-fifth had been done of what ought to have been done. In drainage alone, of 20,000,000 acres requiring it, only 3,000,000 had yet been drained. "The improvement of land," says the Report, "in its effect upon the price of food and upon the dwellings of the poor, is a matter of public interest; but as an investment, it is not sufficiently lucrative to offer much attraction to capital, and therefore even slight difficulties have a powerful influence in arresting it."[1]
In the last words we have a strong indictment against a land system which operates to tie up land to owners as often unable as unwilling to "improve." Given a landowner whose affairs are embarrassed, and our land system is a curse to landlord and tenant alike—prolonging the period of the landlord's bankruptcy at the expense of the land itself. It would have been better for Lord A, and infinitely better for his tenants, if he could have paid his debts at once, and got rid of his " encumbrances," by parting with some portion of his 16,000 acres. As it was, he obtained a humiliating relief by crippling himself, and his son after him, for life, with a "remainder" of "encumbrance," and impoverishment to any possible grandson. By this artificial protection of the interest of a given family in the land, one of the most powerful incentives to prudence is removed—a spendthrift knows that at the worst his social position will remain untouched ; he will always be the nominal lord of a landed estate. The position of such a spendthrift, or of his luckless heir, always has a fascination for the public—as is shown by the many works of fiction whose plots turn on such a situation. But there is another aspect, less picturesque, but immeasurably more important than the troubles of a man who is at once a great landowner and almost a beggar, and that is the position of his tenants. If
- ↑ The Report says that cottages, without land attached, pay about 2½% on their cost. "The replacements of bad cottages by good is an even less remunerative operation." This Report was based upon the Reports of the Enclosure Commissioners.
