means the only threat directed against real property. Politicians of importance have taken up, and made a part of their programme, as worthy of serious attention, projects which go so far as to confer on municipal authorities the right of compulsory purchase of urban and suburban properties at such prices as would be given by a willing buyer to a willing seller-volentis volenti.1 They see nothing extravagant in compelling the restitution of plots of land supposed to have been unjustly appropriated, and in setting back the limits of prescription in order to deal more effectually with the wrongful occupiers. To this must be added the agitation kept on foot by societies like the Land Reform Union and the Scotch Land Restoration League, the stir created by the books and speeches of Henry George, and the pamphlet of Mr. Wallace, and the response which they have drawn from classes of the community-the clergy, for instance-generally credited with conservative views. For a long time too the soil which was to receive the seeds of modern socialism had been prepared by the theories of well-known writers. John Stuart Mill, for instance, claimed, as belonging to the State, the unearned increment, viz., that portion of the increase in the value of land not due to the efforts of the owner but to the general progress of the nation. The English system of great landed estates has provided an opening for, and given an impulse to, a whole series of agrarian laws.2 1 The proposal of Mr. Jesse Collings adopted in substance by Lord Randolph Churchill. See report of debate of Oct. 2, 1886.1 2 Democratic legislation has not kept pace with agrarian legis1 This proposal has since been approved in a modified form, and has passed into law as "The Allotments Act, 1887." The administrative powers of the country gentlemen have been to an equal extent abridged and threatened. The duties to be performed have multiplied continuously with the needs of a progressive community; the task of performing them has in the end proved too much for lation; but it is a fact of no slight significance that the Lord Chancellor of a Tory government brought in, in 1887, a Bill which aimed at no less than the virtual suppression of the right of primogeniture by destroying at a blow the distinction existing between realty and personalty in cases of intestate succession.1 Fresh facilities for the barring of estates tail and provisions forbidding their creation in the future gave still greater emphasis to the anti-aristocratic character of the measure. I give below a list of reforms insisted on at the present time by the advanced party. The "Free Land League" voted the following programme in 1885 (See the Daily News, 19th August, 1885) :(1) Abolition of the law of primogeniture. : (2) Abolition of copyhold and customary tenure, and obsolete manorial rights. (3) Prohibition of settlement of land upon unborn persons, and of the general power of creating life estates in land. (4) Conveyance by registration of title; all interests in the (5) Provision for the sale of encumbered settled property. (7) Enfranchisement of long leaseholds. (8) Amendment of law of landlord and tenant calculated to 1 A Tory government has, in fact, passed a measure which strikes the first blow at the rule of primogeniture. See Stat. 53 and 54, Vic., c. 29. the strength and ability of the original county authorities. It has been necessary to organize special bodies for the administration of districts intermediate in size between the county and the parish. The magistrates are ex officio members of these bodies, but, as a matter of fact, they take little part in their proceedings. On the other hand the State intervenes more actively under the new system than it did under the old. It does so not only by means of a code of minute regulations, but also through the agency of an official whose powers are continuously on the increase-" the inspector." The inspector can attend the proceedings of any board and can call for their accounts; he corresponds with the secretary of the department over the heads of the local authorities, and he alone has the power of initiating the dismissal of their officers. It is only in their Quarter Sessions that the country gentlemen have preserved their liberty of action; there they are still unembarrassed by the presence of elected colleagues or the interference of the State. The Quarter Sessions have, however, retained but little of their importance.1 The small proportion borne by the county rate to the whole sum of local taxation, hardly five per cent., gives us some idea of this rapid falling off. A remarkable change has taken place. In the eighteenth century the gentry had excluded the professional element, the lawyers, from the commission of the peace. At the present time the country gentlemen are in their turn elbowed out and thrust aside by the engineer, the doctor, the officer of health-by a whole 1 The jurisdiction of Quarter Sessions as a criminal court is not referred to here. bureaucracy of skilled specialists. It has been already proposed more than once to deprive the squirearchy of their administrative and financial powers, and to transfer those powers to councils for the most part chosen by election, where the magistrates in fact will not sit, though they may have technically the right to do so. It is proposed to do away with the plural vote which gives to the landowners so marked an advantage, to introduce the ballot, &c. It is hoped by the same measure to restore to the parish its former autonomy, and to revive the parochial self-government which the eighteenth century suppressed. Threatened on one side by the State and officialism, on the other by the principle of popular election, the magistracy as an aristocratic institution needs all its ancient prestige to delay the inevitable success of that double attack.1 1 Since these lines have been written the proposed reform has been effected in England by the Local Government Act, 1888, and in Scotland by the Local Government (Scotland) Act, 1889. The present Cabinet moreover is pledged to complete the work by embodying in a supplementary statute those clauses of their scheme which the resistance of the Opposition has constrained them to postpone for a time. The Local Government Act of 1888 has completed the discomfiture of the ancient system of county government. A wide and gaping breach has been effected in the ancient barrier which secured the supremacy of the squirearchy, and guarded the approaches to the House of Lords. The new enactment retains for the magistrates their judicial functions, but it transfers all the administrative functions of Quarter Sessions to elective county councils. The control of the police, a judicial as well as an administrative matter, is not left wholly with the magistrates; it is intrusted to a mixed committee containing an equal number of elected councillors. It is intended E.C. Р The country gentlemen have guided for centuries the destinies of England. Legislation, executive government, local administration and foreign politics, all phases, in short, of political life, show clear traces of their handiwork. Under the Tudors they played a useful part; they were the agents of the Crown and were moved by true patriotism; but with the fall of the House of Stuart their ambition grew, and they attempted the perilous heights of absolute power. They had already subdued and despoiled the Church, expelled a dynasty, and humbled the Crown. They attempted finally to bring the whole nation into subjection to themselves. They monopolized the land, they broke down parochial selfgovernment, and seized on the right of nomination to all local offices; they extended their jurisdiction in the counties till it was almost unlimited, and so robbed of its importance the central authority of the State; they controlled the electorate, and filled both Houses of Parliament; they succeeded in closing to all other classes the access to political power. At the very time when in the future to substitute elective district councils for the highway boards and boards of health upon which the landlords exercise a preponderating influence. No one has a seat ex officio upon the new councils; the landlords can become members of them only through the votes of their fellow-citizens. Property qualifications are no longer required, and there is no plural vote to tell in favour of the largest tax-payers. The rule is, one man one vote, and the franchise is enjoyed by every householder who pays rates. The fact is full of meaning that it is a Conservative government which has taken the initiative in organizing a reform so clearly destructive of the former authority of the landlords. It was plain that the time had come and that the sacrifice had to be made. |