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causes.

The principal of these was, the attraction, in England at all events, of money towards land. As a general rule, an investment in land returns less than investment in commerce or manufacture. This is so well known, that the number of years' purchase for which land sells habitually represents an interest somewhat lower-often considerably lower-than that which is earned by money otherwise employed. The causes which lead to this result lie deep in the social economy-deep, we may say, in human nature. But, without now investigating them, let us be satisfied with recognising the fact. The inevitable result is, that, if the transfer of land is tolerably free from difficulties, the maintenance of peasant proprietorship is impossible. One by one, the yeomanry will be tempted, by offers of sums from which they can draw greater pecuniary advantage than they can from the land, to part with their holdings to the neighbouring large proprietor, who can either farm the land on a larger scale to greater advantage, or is content-as so many are to make some sacrifice of mere gain to the pride of extending his possessions; or to the newly enriched child of commerce, who buys land, as he does luxuries, to suit his fancy.

In a country like England, where the value of men's labour has for some generations been high, and its command of the precious metals exceptionally great, this cause for the consolidation of land in comparatively few hands is in constant operation. There is a constant transfer of the soil (in merely agricultural districts) from those who only propose to live by cultivating it, to those who hold it for the sake of enjoyment, or vanity, or power. It is idle to allege, in the face of this leading fact, the circumstance that in portions of France and elsewhere peasant proprietorship maintains itself, and morcellement, possibly, increases. Those countries do not possess similar abundance of realised wealth available for the purpose of large purchases; and, if they did, the habits of the population-so deeply rooted by centuries of similar occupancy, and so widely different from ours-would oppose themselves strongly to such investment. There are large tracts of France and other continental countries in which a nouveau riche, buying up the lands of small proprietors, instead of being welcomed and worshipped as he is in England, would be simply hostis humani generis-one detested, opposed, cheated in every way, as a monopolist interloper among a people of equals. The most popular play of many years past on the French stage- Nos bons Villageois,' owes great part of its long-continued success to its sharp hits at these jealous, envious, unaccommodating

qualities of the French peasant. These afford fair game enough. Nevertheless, it may be doubted whether part of Jacques Bonhomme's success in holding his own against the invasion of oligarchy is not owing to his obstinate persistence in those very qualities.

The case, to put it shortly, appears to lie thus :-In countries where the land is much subdivided, there is a tendency, among the small proprietors, to cling to the possession of land with a tenacity more than commensurate with its market value. In countries of great commercial wealth, there is a tendency on the part of the capitalists to give for land more than its market value. Neither tendency is in strict conformity with the axiom which the science of Political Economy assumes, for convenience, as the basis of its abstract reasonings; namely, that men will shape their conduct in the main by correct estimates of pecuniary profit and loss. Nevertheless, both of them exist and influence human affairs; and to modify them is a work of many generations.

And we cannot but observe, in the advocates of peasant proprietorship-of whom our Professor is one of the steadiest -considerable inconsistency on one important point. They are, at the same time, advocates of the freest possible transfer of land.

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'We owe the fact,' says Mr. Rogers, that the great English nation is tenant-at-will to a few thousand landowners, to that device of evil times, a strict settlement. We are informed (he adds, strangely exaggerating the extent of the innovation which he condemns) that the machinery which has gradually changed the whole character of the rural population of England was invented by the subtlety of the two lawyers of the Restoration, Palmer and Bridgman. No Englishman who has the courage to forecast the destinies of his country can doubt that its greatest danger lies in the present alienation of its people from the soil, and in the future exodus of a disinterested peasantry.'

We should have thought, for our own parts, that the effect of the system of strict settlement might be more accurately described as follows: it places some impediment, more or less, in the way of estates passing from the landed to the commercial class; it does not prevent the subdivision of land into parcels, because that, in merely rural districts, is all but prevented already by the propensity of the rich for buying up land. And one thing appears to us all but certain: that if the still subsisting restrictions on the alienation of land are removed, and it is rendered by legal reforms as transferable as a bill of exchange, the effect-however advantageous in other respects

-will only be to render still more difficult the formation, or the maintenance, of small landed properties. The additional facilities for the acquisition of land will be turned to advantage by its great engrossers. A transfer may take place from some impoverished races of landowners of the old stock to wealthy capitalists, but no creation of a yeomanry' is in this way possible.

Let us look a little attentively at Mr. Bright's scheme for the regeneration of Ireland, which certainly does appear to us to partake of the confusion occasioned by the contradictory lines of reasoning which we have above indicated. Mr. Bright would have the State acquire, by fair means, the ownership of (say) half the land of the great proprietors of that country, in order to establish small landowners in their place. In this way, he supposes, peace, and progress, and security of property might be ensured. But suppose these desirable objects attained; what next? Surely an influx of capital in search of employment, and also an immigration of wealthy persons in search of landed investments, into Ireland. The new peasant proprietary would be beset with handsome offers to purchase their estates with sums for which they could obtain, elsewhere, better interest than the annual produce of those estates. They would certainly yield to the temptation; unless we are to suppose, what is most improbable, that the ingrained passion for the maintenance of landed ownership, of which we have spoken as a disturbing cause in economical speculation, had already had time to develop itself in the class in question. The result therefore would simply be the absorption, more or less rapid, of the small properties in large ones; and the introduction of a new set of territorial magnates instead of the old ones. Unless, indeed, Mr. Bright were to complete his measure by an agrarian law, prohibiting the accumulation of land; and then what becomes of the great doctrine that land ought to be rendered as alienable as possible? Is that great doctrine to be enforced in order to pull down a territorial oligarchy, and then to be abandoned again in order to build up artificially a territorial democracy?

But we must apologise for this digression. Our business is not with Mr. Bright's future free peasantry, but with the socage tenants and villeins of the fourteenth century, whom, following the guidance of Professor Rogers, we have safely landed at that step in their history when the great institution of the English yeomanry-half real, half fabulous→→ was just expanding into life, and calling with itself into existence the turbulent, flourishing, merry' England of the

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Houses of York and Lancaster. this transitory scene long years before the Reformation, to which the change is sometimes, with little historical accuracy, attributed. When it will rise again over a similar scene--the ideal, at this moment, of so many of our best thinkers, and the refuge of their minds from the contemplation of the halfplethoric, half-starved community in which we now dwellwe are not the prophets to anticipate. Only one thing appears to us tolerably clear: that the division of land into small properties will arrive together with the division of commercial wealth between many owners, and not before. Believers in the theory of co-operation may see in their favourite project the solution of the problem. And they have at least this advantage; they have a distinct future before their eyes, whether ever to be realised or not. All other speculators on the termination, or improvement, of the strangely and increasingly artificial society in which we now exist, seem to us to have no definite prospect at all, and merely to dream on-like one of Dickens' most famous characters-in continual consciousness that what is is not for the best, and continual trust that something will turn up.'

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ART. III.-1. Lectures on Greek Philosophy, and other Philosophical Remains of JAMES FREDERICK FERRIER, B. A. Oxon, LL.D., late Professor of Moral Philosophy in the University of St. Andrews. Edited by Sir ALEXANDER GRANT, Bart., LL.D., Director of Public Instruction in Bombay, and E. L. LUSHINGTON, M.A., Professor of Greek in the University of Glasgow. 2 vols. Edinburgh and London: 1866.

2. Institutes of Metaphysic: the Theory of Knowing and Being. By JAMES F. FERRIER, A.B. Oxon. 2nd ed. Edinburgh and London: 1861.

THE late Professor Ferrier of St. Andrews was well worthy

of the memorial which his friends have raised for him in these two volumes of Remains.' The Institutes of Meta' physic,' published in his lifetime, had secured for him, if not a wide reputation, yet an undoubted recognition as a thinker from all sides of the philosophical world. The present volumes may not add anything to his philosophical doctrine or excite, among those who have been interested in it, any higher opinion of his speculative ability; but they can scarcely fail to

enhance his general reputation, while they bring before us a mind, singularly devoted to abstract studies, and singularly gifted with the power of illuminating them and rendering them attractive. They serve also to show clearly the relation which his speculations bore to the previous Scottish philosophy against which they were a reaction. It is in this point of view that we propose mainly to consider them at present. Without entering into any detailed review of his lectures on the Greek Philosophy, we shall endeavour in the following paper to fix his position as a thinker and writer, and to offer a brief estimate of him in both capacities. The powers exhibited in these Remains' and in the Institutes of Metaphysic,' seem to us to demand a more general acknowledgment than they have yet received.

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In the introductory notice, prefixed to the volumes of 'Remains,' written by Professor Lushington, with much taste and graceful feeling, we learn the few particulars of Professor Ferrier's life deserving to be recorded. He was born into an intellectual and literary circle. His grandfather was an intimate friend of Sir Walter Scott; his aunt was the well-known authoress of Marriage,' 'Destiny,' and The Inheritance.' Professor Wilson was his uncle, and was afterwards connected with him by still closer ties. He may be said to have come by birthright, therefore, into the possession of much that was characteristic and valuable in the old intellectual life of Edinburgh, and the influence of this inheritance is very obvious in some features of his own intellectual culture. He was born in 1808, and received his early education in the Manse of Ruthwell, Dumfriesshire. Here, too, he was fortunate. Dr. Duncan of Ruthwell was one of many Scottish clergymen who, while not learned in any special manner, are yet full of the mental vigour and vivacity which learning does not always give. was the originator of Savings Banks in the south of Scotland. He was also a close observer of nature, and gave some of the fruits of his observations to the world in a series of interesting volumes on the Seasons.' In the family of this clergyman there was first awakened in Mr. Ferrier's mind the lively interest and affection which he never lost for Virgil, Ovid, and the Latin poets in general; he often spoke in later life of the new source of delight then opened to him in these authors. He afterwards attended the Edinburgh High School, and was for some time domiciled with Dr. Burney at Greenwich. He then went to the Edinburgh University for two sessions, from 1825 to 1827, and finally to Oxford, which he entered as a fellow-commoner of Magdalen, and where he took the degree of B. A. in 1831.

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