the manor. The great manufacturers, as a class, were not only fully conscious of their own power and weight in the country, but they held a common faith, they had given their common adhesion to certain well-defined principles, and they were intent upon carrying those principles, to their practical conclusion. Each of the opposing hosts represented a distinct body of interests; a distinct economic theory was inscribed on the banner of each. The class which had risen claimed a place in the political world from which it had till then been shut out; its demands were backed by the opinion of the nation; it worsted its opponents, and finally carried its point. This redistribution of power received its legislative recognition in the Reform Act of 1832. We must not however regard this great measure as merely conceding their political rights to a portion of the nation which had been denied them; it was something more than a step towards equality, than a concession granted to democracy. A new theory of politics, slowly elaborated after much effort, appeared in the Reformed Parliament, inspired fresh legislation, modified the moral code, and strove to reorganize on its own lines the political system of England.

VII

THE REFORM OF 1832

CONCLUSION

It was in 1832 that the two Englands first met in conflict. It does not fall within the scope of this work to chronicle in detail the collisions and onslaughts, the doubtful victories and the gradual retreat of the country gentlemen, or to trace down to the present day the record of a struggle which is still unfinished. One by one the privileges of the higher classes were done away with. Their political privileges fell first. The Reform Act of 1832 gave to the great manufacturing towns the right of returning members, and transferred to them the seats in Parliament which had belonged to the "pocket boroughs" of the country aristocracy. The Act of 1835 dissolved the ancient municipal corporations, close and corrupt bodies who sold their votes to the great landowners. In 1838 the exclusive character of the property qualification for a seat in Parliament, which had till then depended on real property alone,was modified, and in 1858 the property qualification was abandoned altogether.

Their economic privileges were swept away at a single

blow in 1846. The corn laws were repealed, and the markets opened to cereals from abroad. Their fiscal immunities were broken in upon, notably in 1853; and during last year1 (1885) a proposal of the then government would have modified them still further. But it is in relation to questions of civil privilege and administrative authority that the combat waxes hottest, and that victory will carry with it the most important results. During the whole of the eighteenth century the country gentlemen, as we have seen, did their utmost to turn the ownership of land into a monopoly by accumulating it in the hands of a few, and to establish a system of mortmain by tying up estates in the same families from generation to generation. They sinned directly against economic law in rendering the position of the farmer precarious and uncertain to the highest degree, when his undertaking was one which could only be carried on in a spirit of far-seeing enterprise and with a view to faroff results. A system which favoured monopoly and mortmain, and ran counter to the laws of political economy, gave ample reason for the intervention of the legislature. in the name of the public welfare. Napoleon remarked, when the law of 1810 relating to mines was under discussion, that he would never suffer any individual to throw twenty square leagues of land in a corn-growing province out of cultivation, in order to form a park.2

1 Written in 1886. The passage refers to a proposal in Mr. Childers's Budget of 1885.

2 Menant, Annales de l'École des Sciences politiques, No. 2. Carlyle puts the following language into the mouths of the squirearchy: "What would become of you if we chose to grow

The right of the individual to dispose of his property does not justify him in depriving the people of their means of subsistence. The danger was, in the case of England, all the more grave as, according to the most eminent lawyers, the Roman and French conception of the ownership of property, as implying the absolute right to use and abuse it, is unknown to the English common law. The principle of that law is to recognize "tenures" only, that is to say, the holding of land which has been granted on certain conditions. This species of ownership, altogether relative in character, occupies a moral and legal position far less strong than does ownership as understood in certain other countries, as, for instance, in France; it is less able to defend itself energetically from attacks directed against it in the name of public expediency. The late statutes dealing with the relations of landlords and tenants in Ireland offended against no principle of English law,1 even when they thrust aside freedom of contract, substituted a standard of value fixed by an official arbitrator for the law of supply and demand, and practically conferred upon the tenant only partridges henceforth and a modicum of wheat for our own use? Cannot we do what we like with our own?"-Past and Present, p. 215.

1 The Irish tenant no more looks upon his rent as proving the ownership of the land by the landlord than does the landlord look upon his taxes as proving the ownership of the land by the State. Gladstonian legislation has nearly arrived at the Irish theory of ownership, by reducing the landlord, speaking approximately, to the position of a mere rent-charger. The tenants consider that not enough has yet been done for them, seeing that they are still liable to eviction in cases where they are unable to pay their rents.

a species of joint ownership in the soil. They were opposed to interests and considerations which were economic only; the only serious arguments which they had to contend with were those founded on expediency.

We find in the recent Act passed for the benefit of the Scotch crofters a still graver legislative infringement, in a certain sense, upon the rights of property. It is to be observed that while the subject was under discussion the arguments on both sides were founded on the special circumstances of the case, and again amounted to nothing more than appeals to expediency. Even in England the landlords have shown themselves no better able to withstand, upon principle, a measure designed to protect the tenant against damage done by game, nor a measure designed to secure him compensation for his own permanent improvements. Here again we have another attack directed against freedom of contract. The farmer now possesses certain rights which he cannot surrender by agreement; there are certain improvements which he can carry out, even against the wishes of his landlord, without losing his right to be compensated for them on a scale to be fixed by arbitration. If moreover we are to attach weight to the complaints of the class who have benefited by recent legislation, and to the schemes put forward by theorists, the Agricultural Holdings Act is merely the tentative introduction to more radical measures. It is openly proposed to reduce the landlord to the position of a rent-charger, and a time is to come when his tenants shall be free to cultivate his estates and transfer their interests in them without his having any right to interfere. This is however by no