of the estate—who of course could be trusted to say nothing against the squire.
Not very long ago, Lord de Ramsay gave notice to 800 holders of allotments, alleging as a reason that they were "discontented." Such a reason assumes that permission to cultivate land (paying a rent) is a favour. But everyone knew that the true reason was that the 800 had voted against Lord de Ramsay's brother at the election. Lord de Ramsay thus had the power of forbidding 800 persons to hold land. And yet we wonder that villages are depopulated, that the young people find them "dull," and that all the most enterprising go off to the towns! A feudal lord of a manor would have had a statute passed against him, setting forth the injury done to the King and kingdom in the person of these tenants. But in modern times, when "profit" means money, the interests of the community are overshadowed by the interests of the individual. This was carried so far, that for fifty years the landowners of England controlled the supply of corn. There can be no more striking instance of the fact that the individual is better able to defend himself than the community. It would have been impossible to force a single individual to pay an artificial price for his bread, but when the whole people suffered, they were tolerably submissive. So tender are we of the "right" of a landlord to do what he will with his "own," that we forget that the "duties" of landholding are greater than the "rights," by so much as land differs from all other possessions.
The power wielded by land is far too great to be concentrated in so few hands. In the rural districts it is omnipotent. Country magistrates are almost invariably landowners, when not parsons; and when they are parsons, it is generally because the parson is also a landowner—or, as he has been called, "a squarson." Until 1831, the Game Laws gave sporting rights exclusively to owners of land of a certain value. Below that a man might not shoot a hare or a rabbit on his own land. The bolder spirits of a village took to poaching, and so came to ruin. Half the convicts sent to Botany Bay in the old days were manufactured by the Game Laws.
A good many years ago, the Rev. A. Barham-Zwincke,
