Chapter II: Part 2

It is repeated now, in nearly every country newspaper, that the English farmer cannot compete with the American grower because of the burdens on the land of England. I will not write out (I cannot improve) Ricardo's proof that rent does not enter into price. The "burdens" on land are really first charges on the rackrent and do not affect a year-to-year tenant at all. When a farmer meditates taking a farm he asks not merely what is the rent: he inquires what is the tithe, what the average amount of the rates (and is that likely to increase or diminish during the next seven years); the intending tenant only wants to know what sum in all he will have to pay for the farm; whether any of this payment is called tithe or not, or whether some of it is quit-rent, or whether he is to pay the land tax for his landlord's convenience,--about all this he cares nothing; they are mere questions of names to him.

5. MAKING THE MOST OF OUR LAND.

John S. Mill, following W. T. Thornton, advocated a system of petty proprietors against the English system of large farms with hired labourers. Figures were quoted to show the splendid produce got by petty proprietors in France and elsewhere--as the result, however, of infinite toil. The petty proprietors were, moreover, shown to be much better off than our hired labourers; and the magic of property combined with independence was represented as having produced a superior class. These things may have been so, at least in some cases and particular countries, at the date (before 1846) when J. S. Mill originally put forward these views. The liberal, and radical writers on political economy and sociology still follow (most of them) on the same side, which has become in a manner historically the liberal side. There is much against it.

First, Production on the large scale is cheaper than on the small; this is as true of agriculture as of other industries. The large farmer has one fixed and one movable steam-engine of his own; he has his own drills, threshing and winnowing machines, reaping and mowing machines. The petty proprietor may hire these, but at a dear rate, and few of them can work to any advantage on his small patches of corn. The large farmer has large fields; he saves area as against the petty proprietors; he has fewer headlands and fences, harbouring weeds and stopping the sun and air. The large farmer can work corn and sheep together; one shepherd and his boy will look after 500 ewes. You may travel 200 miles by rail in France and not see two flocks of sheep. Sheep-farming is seen all the world over to be an industry that pays on the large scale; and the want of it injures the corn produce of the French petty proprietor. Louis Napoleon sent Lavergne to make a report on English farming; the substance of his report is, that were France farmed on the English system by English farmers, the corn produce would be four or five times what it is now; leaving sheep out of the question.

The advocates of peasant-proprietorship, at least the better informed ones, do not now suppose that a peasant receiving a few acres out of a large English average farm (and capital to make a start) could make a subsistence out of it. They believe that peasant-proprietors could maintain themselves on small plots of rich land in and close to towns, working as market-gardeners or cowkeepers rather than as farmers.

This narrows down the peasant-proprietor theory vastly in its practical application; it remains hardly a national question. But I have been astonished to see in the neighbourhood of London of late years the large "gentleman" market-gardeners steadily displacing the smaller and all the single-handed men. The subject is so important that I will take one of two instances in detail. I have seen a gentleman market-gardener, eight miles or so from Covent Garden, growing strawberries, several acres in each patch. He had young men (a separate staff) out at daybreak to keep the birds off. The small gardener, growing a few long beds of strawberries, is ruined by the birds, whether he lets them eat or goes into the expense and labour of netting. The gentleman has his own large spring-vans waiting; these vans are fitted for fruit, and as the pickers gather the strawberries they deliver them in small and frequent parcels to the packers. The moment the first van is laden it starts at three miles per hour and travels to Covent Garden itself, where the strawberries are delivered to the fruit-dealer, who buys them wholesale of the gentleman-gardener. The small grower has to get his strawberries to the local railway station, and to arrange to get them from the London terminus to market; his trouble and expense are considerable; but, more important still, his strawberries do not come into the hands of the wholesale dealer in the "condition" that the large grower's do. This large grower admitted that he was paying £12 an acre per annum for some of his land; he added, "My labour per acre, and even my manure per acre, costs so much that I do not think about a few pounds rent more or less." These gentleman-gardeners are on the average better educated than the small market-gardeners; they travel about the country, gather hints, and pick up new good varieties of strawberries, etc. From their scale of operations and varied sorts of strawberries they can, even in rough wet weather or in drought, always supply to their wholesale dealer some fruit. In fine, they beat the small grower at every point; they undersell him at Covent Garden; they outbid him for desirable garden-land within reach of London. It may be said that in growing plain vegetables the small gardener would not be at such a disadvantage. I will reply (without detailing all my observations) that I have seen the same gentleman-gardener growing a two-acre plot of early radishes, and that he completely spoilt early radishes for all the small gardeners.

The advocates of peasant-proprietors have thought cowkeeping hopeful for small men. In my experience dairies of fifty or sixty cows have an enormous advantage; they can have perfectly designed dairies; they have enough cream to make butter daily throughout the year (which saves much trouble, loss, and occasionally inferior butter); they can maintain approximately a uniform supply. In short, they beat, undersell, and displace the small cowkeepers wherever the large dairy is moderately well managed.

The cottager or peasant-proprietor has, I believe, an advantage in poultry of all kinds. When poultry are kept in very large numbers they are more liable to disease, and the diseases are more disastrous--sweeping off the whole large stock. Fowl and egg farming is one of the most successful, perhaps the most successful point with the French peasant-proprietors. To make birdfarming successful the proper plan is to keep a moderate number of as many birds as possible--fowls, "galeenies," ducks, geese, turkeys, large pigeons--and to go in for eggs as well as fowls. I have not seen peasant-proprietors in England attempting this, which seems to me one of the most hopeful of experiments for them.

The second point urged by Mill, and still by some, is that peasant-proprietors are better off than English labourers. With the present price of agricultural labour in England this seems to be very generally not the case; the French peasant-proprietors and the agricultural lower classes in Germany are (with small exceptions) now worse off than the English farm-labourer; they work very much harder and they get less to eat. The economic truth doubtless is that the hired labourer may or may not be better off than the peasant-proprietor, according to circumstances; and circumstances in England just now are in favour of the hired labourer.

Then as to independence, it may fairly be questioned whether a good agricultural workman, now practically liberated from the Law of Settlement, and who can command a fair wage anywhere, is not really more independent than a French peasant absolutely tied to a three-acre plot for life.

The real difference between the advocates of the nationalisation of the land and the Conservatives is this. The Conservative says, "Leave everything to its natural course, and let us have no Government interference. If the peasant-proprietor really can maintain himself while paying as high a rent as the ordinary farmer, we shall soon have plenty of them." Or, the Conservative has no objection to a philanthropist starting a few picked peasant-proprietors as an experiment. But he objects to starting any gigantic new scheme of working the land, except as a matter of business; he objects to Government philanthropy, which means giving away other people's money.

Our farm-labourers, as a rule, know nothing of gardening, and few of them can command £10 capital. I have sometimes looked round to select a picked man, and wondered whether, if I put him in a selected five-acre plot near a town, and also lent him the £200 or so capital requisite to give him a chance, this picked agricultural labourer would succeed; and I have inclined to think he would not succeed. I need not therefore express any opinion as to what would happen if Government were to take 10,000 or 100,000 farm-labourers, advance them £200 each, and place them in five-acre or ten-acre plots: there would be a tremendous bill to pay, and the plan of peasant-proprietors would be put aside for many a day. If the plan is to be successful it must be introduced gradually and in a business manner, _i.e._ what does not pay must not be persisted in.

The plan, now frequently put forward, that Government is to employ all men out of work to reclaim and bring into cultivation waste lands, is liable to additional objections. Who is to fix the wages, the hours of labour, and the tale of work for the Government labourers? If these were fixed as the advocates of the plan wish them fixed, Government would soon have all the labourers of the country in its employ. If, on the other hand, these were fixed below the market rate, Government would only have such labour as the Poor-Law Unions now have, and which they find hardly worth employing.

Leaving this (practically grave) difficulty aside, if a heath or a moor is now uncultivated it is because nobody sees how it can be profitably brought into cultivation; it can always at a sufficient outlay be reclaimed, but that will not be done unless it is calculated that the rent of the land when reclaimed will pay the interest on the whole expense of reclamation, and something besides. If Government reclaims land that private persons cannot reclaim with profit, we may be sure that Government will suffer a considerable loss. This must be provided out of taxes: are the promoters of reclamation of wastes by Government prepared for this?

The wastes of England are the only land left the public. Elsewhere the public can only walk along a pavement or a high road. The good land is all pretty well in cultivation; and the best of what is left can give but a moderate profit on reclamation, while its enclosure, under Act of Parliament, deprives the public of it for ever. Hence Professor H. Fawcett, throughout his parliamentary career, put his veto with great success on all enclosure schemes. It is possible that there might be a profit on the enclosure of Epping Forest: who will now support that reclamation?

It is very desirable that wealthy private philanthropic individuals and wealthy private philosophic societies, should try experiments in small farming, market-gardening, co-operative farming, reclamation of wastes, etc. There is no hindrance to their so doing: they can readily hire as many farms as they please at cheap rents, and subdivide them, and put in picked labourers with an advance of capital. But that Government should embark in uncertain speculations of this kind is quite another thing.

The safe general principle, whether in the sale of horses, the letting of houses, or the letting of land, is that Government should not interfere; or, to speak more correctly, Government interference should only interfere to prevent restrictive covenants and to ensure Free Trade, so that every article (land included) may pass without restraint into the hands of the man to whom it is worth most. The greater the individual profit the greater the national profit. Under a section headed "Law," below, I will say something about the removal of entail, etc.--a dry but important branch of the question. The National Property Rate, with the aid of sycophants, would remove many obstructions.

There has been much controversy and several Parliamentary Acts concerning the regulation of bargains between landlord and tenant. How a tenant or a landlord can be injured in such a bargain is impossible to understand, except in so far as a man is injured who gives £30 for a horse worth only £20. Will Parliament interfere to protect such horse-purchasers? The matter has been obscured by omitting to notice that a tenant with a long lease at a fixed rent possesses a share (often the larger share) of the "landlord interest," in the language of political economy. As a simple example: A tenant took, say in 1850, a Scotch farm on a Scotch lease absolute of nineteen years, at £500 a year. Within two or three years of his so taking it the rise in wool, potatoes, and other things, caused the value of the farm to rise to £600 a year, and this increased value lasted the whole of his lease and some time after. Now, treating the increase of value of £100 a year as permanent (as it was very soon regarded both by landlord and tenant), it is clear that this £100 a year for the period of the lease (say seventeen years to run) went to the tenant, not to the landlord; and the first seventeen years of an annuity in fee is worth more than all the rest.

It is evident that on a seven years' (absolute) lease the tenant would similarly get a good share (not the larger share) in all the improvement in value that occurred during his lease. Up to ten or twelve years ago the value of land had been rising very steadily in the South of England for near half a century. Rents were pushed up very generally at the termination of every lease, though noblemen, great county gentlemen, the Church, and the Universities, as a rule, never raised the rent on an old tenant; but they could raise the rent all the more by a jump when a new man came in. During all these years the tenant-farmers complained rarely of their leases, though they were often subject to covenant nuisances about cropping, selling off the farm, game, and incoming for the new tenant.

But during the last ten years the process is reversed. A farmer took a farm for £500 a year for seven years in the south of England, and before the lease had run half out the farm was not worth £400 (and in many cases not £300). Here the tenant suffered a heavy loss. When in former years he got a gain he never proposed to allow his landlord 15 per cent extra rent. But now that the drop in value of such farms has taken place, and probably will not proceed further, a tenant who takes a new lease requires no Act of Parliament to protect him: he can protect himself. By the date the Abolition of the Game Laws (a wrong but intelligible phrase) was carried, the farmers in the South of England were in a position not to take any benefit under that Act, but to covenant for all the game and sporting on their farms for themselves. So as to the Act regulating the leases between tenant and landlord, where they chose to avail themselves of it, the tenant now can generally get more favourable terms outside the provisions of the Act. Farms are so down, tenants so scarce, that landlords have to give way on all minor points. Wherever Government interference operates at all, it is almost sure to operate harmfully. Consider for a moment the case of "incoming." Formerly, by the "custom of the country" south of London, the incoming tenant paid for two years' dressing for the corn crops, north of London he paid the outgoing tenant only for one year's dressing, by the custom of the country too. The question practically only amounted to increasing by 5 per cent the capital necessary to take the farm south of London. Now what can be gained by Government interference in such a matter as this, in which each farmer and land-agent was in general in favour of the "custom" he had grown up under?

A prevalent idea is that the land is not highly farmed enough, and that the land of England might be made to yield much more, and that Government is to cause this to be done. It is most unfortunate to raise this theory at the moment when land is "down," i.e. when produce is cheap, labour expensive. Every farmer knows that the only way to meet these conditions is to farm "lower." In a south country farm the farmer will sow much less corn, and try to keep more sheep. In the Western States of America, where produce is very cheap, labour very dear, the "lowness" of the farming is always abused by the English traveller (who thus shows that he knows nothing about either farming or political economy). A farmer, twenty-five years ago, took a very large and fine corn farm: it had been worked on the five-course system, i.e. three white crops in five years; the farmer made a careful calculation whether a four-course husbandry, i.e. two white crops in four years, would not be more profitable; it appeared to come to exactly the same thing. At this juncture a rise of a shilling a week in wages took place; this gave a clear advantage to the four-course, and the farm was at once worked round to the four course shift. In this simple case a small rise in wages brought about a considerable diminution in gross produce, while the loss to the farmer was small. The remarks in this section have been directed to the case, common in the South of England, where there has been within the last twelve years a fall of rent from 25 to 50 per cent. In pasture farms, in rich land, and in potato farms (wherein you can keep one-sixth the land in potatoes), the fall in rent has been much less--sometimes inappreciable.

But, some person may urge, if Government interferes, and compels the farmer to farm higher than he wishes to himself, the gross produce will be more, and the employment for labourers will be at the same time better. True, and this is the quintessence of Protection. The whole point of Free Trade is to allow capital to be employed where it is most profitable: high farming is only to be preferred (both for individual and nation) to low when it is the more profitable. Capital that cannot be employed to ordinary trade profit on the land must be transferred to other industries where it will earn the ordinary rate of trade profit; or, if there is no trade yielding such profit ready to absorb it in England, the capital must go to the United States or New Zealand and earn an increased profit. As to the labourers, they must follow the capital; or they may starve in England leaving few progeny, while the well-fed labourers of the Western States of America and New Zealand leave large families: this will do instead of emigration.

It is to be noted that great improvements in farming, especially in machinery, have been effected in the last thirty years, largely by the operation of the All England and County Agricultural Societies. I note further that the people who abuse the farmers for bad farming and clamour for Government interference to promote high farming, conspicuously refrain from supporting these agricultural societies.

6. FREE TRADE IN RAILWAYS.

Government might monopolise the retailing of tea in England. At present, in a country town like Exeter or Canterbury, there may be fifty grocers selling tea. In their competition they lay out a good deal in advertisement and handsome shop fronts in the most expensive streets; they keep (the fifty between them) many more hands than are necessary to retail the tea. All this outlay has to come out of the consumer. Government would buy pure tea first-hand in large quantities cheap; a few trustworthy highly-paid officials would test it, value it, and see it done up in sealed packages of sizes from 16 lbs. down to 2 oz.: these might be sold in an odd room attached to the Post Office in each town and village. There can be little doubt but that a saving in capital and labour would thus be effected, while the public would get the tea cheaper and purer than at present. The 2 oz. purchaser, in particular, would pay a good deal less for 2 oz. of real tea than she pays now for 2 oz. of rubbish.

Or,--Government might hand over the tea-retailing of Canterbury and five miles round to a company as a monopoly: the state of things would be something like what we experience in the large stores now: the public would get their tea probably cheaper (quality considered) than at present; the company would make a large profit on their capital. If Government sanctioned two tea-retailing companies at Canterbury, these would probably make a less rate of profit: though, after the first heat of fight was over, they would probably agree to sell the same tea at the same (profitable) rates, and the consumers would gain little out of so restricted a competition. If a new company were to apply for a private Act to enable them to retail tea at Canterbury, the old company would show Parliament that themselves sufficed to satisfy the requirements of the public.

The case of tea is a very specious one. By Government taking to itself each branch of business in succession till all was in Government hands we should arrive at Communism. For each successive interference of Government a reason from economy can generally be found: as in the case of telegraphs, so in the case of tea. The real objection to Government monopolising the retail of tea is, that so long as we live under a system of competition we had better stick to that plan altogether. At every turn of our present struggling system there is waste; but the ultimate effect of competition is to reduce the waste to a minimum. In the extreme case of tea it is pretty clear that the system of stores will, when fully developed, give the public all or nearly all they might hope to get from Government retailing, and at the same time will reduce the loss by competition among tea-retailers.

But there is one industry, one branch of the public service, which should be the very last to be monopolised or restricted by Government, viz., the carrying of passengers and goods from one place to another, especially carrying by railway; and yet this particular industry is hampered by law and restricted by monopolies above all others--as I suppose, most unnecessarily; but I will take a few cases in detail before arguing from the general principle of Free Trade.

There is one railway from London to Brighton: there are two railways from London to Exeter. There are fewer quick trains daily from London to Brighton than from London to Exeter. There are third-class carriages at a penny a mile on all the quick trains from Waterloo to Exeter: from London to Brighton the only penny a mile train starts at an inconvenient hour and travels exceedingly slow. The Brighton charge express fares on every convenient quick train they run; the South-Western have no express fares at all. The South-Western third-class carriages are padded, and as comfortable as the first; the Brighton third-class carriages are bare, very long, and run so badly that the shaking, the rattling of glass, and the draughts, keep everybody (who can possibly afford it) out of them.

Naturally there have been numerous schemes for a second railway from London to Brighton in the course of the last twenty-five years. The present railway company has (they are not to blame for it) opposed each scheme tooth and nail. They have shown that they themselves satisfy the requirements of the public, and at the same time do not make a very high dividend. If a new grocer required an Act of Parliament to set up as a tea-retailer in Canterbury, could not all the existing tea-retailers there prove most triumphantly that an additional grocer was not wanted, and that their own profits were reasonable? It is not too much to say that the greater part of the evidence admitted by Parliamentary Committees against proposed new railways is foolery: without wasting time on it, the Parliamentary Committee might assume as proved that no monopolist trader wants a competitor. But the only safety for the public is in competition. In railway competition the public always profit: if the two companies agree to run at the same fares, the public gain in number and speed of trains, better carriages, and attentive consideration of their comfort. Moreover, in the case of two railways between London and Exeter, or between London and Brighton, the two lines only meet (not then quite) at the two termini; and the public is accommodated at all the new intermediate stations where there was no station at all before.

The North-Western Railway was many years ago opposing a directly competing scheme. They brought before the Parliamentary Committee the late Mr. Horne, whom they justly credited with ability enough to throw dust in the eyes of almost any Parliamentary five. Mr Home's evidence was: "I understand railway traffic as well as anybody; the public are deluded in thinking they would gain by competition: the two companies might fight for a week or two, then they would more wisely agree, and put up their fares above the present North-Western fares, till they had recouped themselves out of the public all they had lost by their fight." This did very well for the Parliamentary Committee; but it is a fallacy. At present the North-Western Railway, though empowered by law to charge three-pence a mile first-class, charge twopence a mile only: why?--because twopence a mile they find to be on the whole the most paying rate. Ergo, after the fight with their directly competing brother was over, they would settle down to twopence a mile again. The public could not lose by the competition; they might gain. All experience shows that they invariably do gain.

In France, Government has restricted the construction of railways very greatly, and protected the monopoly of each existing company closely. The mileage of railway open in France, in proportion to area and population, is very small in comparison with that in England. Moreover, the French lines are worked by quasi-Government officials, whose object is to avoid work, and still more to avoid responsibility, and who will not make the slightest effort to accommodate the public: they do not wish the trade at their station increased. Under this system the traffic on the French railways is low; especially when we consider how little each is interfered with by other lines, and what a broad band of country it has to drain.

The immense progress made by England since 1846, as compared with the progress of France or of Germany, is often attributed _solely_ to Free Trade. I believe Free Trade has done much for us: but I am sure that our railway superiority (to France, Germany, etc.) has done much also. Probably no one who has not _resided_ some time in a French town (say a station on a main railway 150 miles from Paris as the least favourable case for my argument) can realise the enormous disadvantage by loss of time that a French business man is under, as compared with the Englishman. To get some necessary manufactured article from Paris is a matter of days; during which his machinery may all stand still. The communication with Paris, however, is where the Frenchman suffers least: the number of trains is so small, and the slowness of all (but the express) is such that the "local" traffic is nothing: unless a man intends to go a good many miles he would ride or even walk rather than go by train. He does not mind getting up at 2 a.m. to go to Paris; but he will not get up at that hour to go six or eight miles, especially if he is given no choice as to the hour at which he must return.

But the usual remark about the French railways is, "See how much better they manage these things in France. While our railway companies are all spending their money in fighting and in competition, and pay dividends of 4 or 5 per cent, the French railways have their routes settled by Government engineers, and pay 8 or 10 per cent." I am going to propose a plan for stopping all company fighting in England for ever: but--as to the dividend--it can only mean that, like any other Government monopoly, the French public are being made to pay more for travelling than they need.

As regards the interest of the public, the rate of dividend paid by a great railway company is of very small importance. For many years the South-Western Company paid double the dividend the Great Western did. How did this affect the work each did for the public--the conveyance of passengers and goods? Many common highways have been made by parishes and landowners combined for the public convenience; the capital so laid out paid no direct interest (the road was a highway, not a turnpike): how does this case differ from a railway that pays no dividend on the original stock? If the railway carried me from Exeter to London in five hours for thirteen shillings, what does it matter to me whether the company pays 2-1/2 per cent or 6-1/2 per cent to its original shareholders? In a very few small and special cases we have seen a railway line not pay for the working, and be closed. In a few other cases, where the dividend paid is less than 4-1/2 per cent, it is possible that the utility of the line to the public is less than the loss of the shareholders in a non-paying investment. I say this is a possible and conceivable case--in some very short lines or in some very thinly inhabited districts. Such cases I believe rare. Not rarely the initial cost of the line has been seriously increased by promotion, legal and parliamentary expenses, enormous sums extorted for land, severance, etc.; if these expenses can be done away with, these cases of railways constructed at a loss _on the whole_ to the nation may be made fewer still.

The way in which the railway monopoly, the monopoly of the great companies, has grown up is noteworthy. To enable a company to take the land of a private man compulsorily a private Act of Parliament was necessary. The Parliamentary Committees then said, We will not enable you to dispossess forcibly private owners of their land for "a public purpose" unless you further shew that this includes a public advantage. Private owners were of course let in to show cause against a new railway; they always talked like Naboth (the Parliamentary Committees must have been wearied by the continual references to Naboth), but the genuine private owners sold themselves at the last minute; after they had pushed the company up to the highest bid, they well knew that this was above what they could get in the after arbitration, and "closed," withdrawing their opposition the last day in the Committee room. The opposition company, besides the grounds of insufficient need for a new line, etc., always supports and comforts the opposing landowners: but the great resource of the opposing company is to hire a landowner to oppose, especially a local attorney or agent who owns land proposed to be taken by the new line. Such an attorney, employed professionally by the opposing company, cannot be bought off at any price; he is a real Naboth, and in his character of a dispossessed landowner he will fight for the company every point that they cannot decently fight for themselves.

Opposing a railway bill in Parliament has thus become an art; so much so, that no independent small line can be made unless they can get the support of one (at least) of the great companies that are supposed to occupy the area. The lines made (economically often) by the great companies themselves are not primarily designed for the accommodation of the public, but for the private purposes of the great company; sometimes they are made merely to diddle another great company.

It is well to compare the law regarding making a new railway with that for making a new main-drain in the fens. In the latter case the new drain company receives extraordinary powers and may put a rate on the land benefited. In the case of a railway passing through a farm, the common estimate is that it adds a shilling an acre value to the rent of the farm; if there is a station on the farm it often adds much more to the agricultural value. Landlords are up to this: a landlord triumphantly told me, "I got £7000 from that company for cutting me up; but I would have given them £14,000 to cut me up more." (In this case, however, building value came in.) But the disgraceful squabbling of companies, who "sell" any owner without scruple when they come to terms among themselves, has disgusted landlords from actively supporting railway schemes.

A great deal of the opposition between rival companies has been from their point of view an error, as they have subsequently discovered for themselves. When the Great Western Company first opened their station at Basingstoke there was war between them and the South-Western, who thought all their London West-End passengers would transfer themselves to the Great Western at Basingstoke in order to avoid a cab drive from Waterloo to Paddington. Some passengers do so transfer themselves. But _via_ Basingstoke a fine trade sprang up between the south of England and the Oxford and Leamington route, which far more than compensated the South-Western Company for the London passengers they lost at Basingstoke. So in a very few years there was peace at Basingstoke, and a through-carriage daily from Birkenhead to Southampton. I think it is impossible to estimate how much one railway company profits by the facilities afforded by all the surrounding companies. The loss at a limited number of competing termini is seen; the gain in the local and cross-country traffic is not.

I propose Free Trade in Railways. I mean that any person or company shall be free to make a railway wherever they please. They will have, before commencing the line, to lodge with the Board of Trade the cost of the land they take as valued in the National Rate Book, with the 30 per cent for compulsory purchase. They will not have to lodge the money where they have come to terms with the owner; and the Board of Trade will allow them to construct the line in reasonable sections. Having lodged their money, the company (or private speculator) will only have to go to work under the (amended) Lands Clauses Consolidation Act.

If this scheme were sanctioned we should have in the course of the next twenty years, _as I estimate_, £100,000,000 additional invested in England profitably--not under Government pressure, but by business men to get interest. Even where the new lines paid little interest we should get the accommodation of the public. We should have no big village without its railway; and we should have a great extension of private sidings. On the eastern half of England we might get a great number of narrow gauge steam trams running along the present trunk roads. (Suppose a steam tram from London to York by the Royston route, going through all the towns, running trams an hour apart all day, going eight miles an hour through the towns, sixteen or twenty miles an hour in the country, taking up and setting down everywhere, would it not pay?)

The only objection to Free Trade in railways is that it would injure the existing railway monopoly. Under this principle no monopoly ever would have been or ever will be put down. But I believe the existing great companies would very generally gain by Free Trade in railways.

For, first, few new railways would be in direct competition with the old. The old lines have level roads; they can run quicker and with less wear and tear than the new ones, which would generally have steeper gradients. The new Free Trade lines would be in the main a network in the interstices of the present lines. By this the existing companies would gain enormously; they would be the trunk lines which the network would feed. It is true that there would soon be a second line to Brighton; the present Brighton Company would possibly pay as good a dividend then as they do now. But if they did not, it would only show how they tax the public now as well as hinder trade. I am not bound to show that the monopolists would profit by Free Trade; I deny that the monopolists have any vested interest in their monopoly, or that Parliament, i.e. the nation, has made any covenant with them that their monopoly shall never be invaded.

I have suggested three great changes: (1) Perfect Free Trade at all our ports; (2) The exploitation of the land through the National Rate Book machinery; (3) Free Trade in Railways. Of these the last is clearly advisable, nor is there anything (in my opinion) to be urged on the other side. At the same time it is not less important than either of the two other suggestions. But the three would work best together--each aiding and reacting on the other; they would thus provide "progress" (which means comfort to all classes) in England for at least two generations of men. If there was no National Rate Book, the new railways would have to pay exorbitantly for the land they took up under the existing arbitration system; they would be relieved merely from the parliamentary opposition of other companies and of private individuals. The private owner must be deprived of his present privilege of parliamentary opposition, which gives him the power to extort an exorbitant price for his land--because a company can always oppose in the garb of some private owner whom they have hired.

A less but important branch of this reform is the narrowing of Government interference under pretence of protecting the public. Great expenses are thus thrown on railway companies. The companies cannot, therefore, charge increased fares, but such expenses diminish the number of new railway schemes brought forward. Nor do Government rules protect the public so well as the old plan (abolished by Chief-Justice Cockburn) of making the railway company pay for killing or injuring people. Now, after a great railway smash, the company comes forward and shows that there was no negligence on their part; that in the signals, breaks, etc., they had satisfied all the Board of Trade regulations, and the injured passengers can get nothing. The real way to protect the passengers is to allow the company to make their own arrangements, and to compel them to pay heavily for killing and maiming passengers. This is quite defensible in theory, as in the case of manslaughter by an individual we give him some punishment out of our civilised respect for human life, though he may have been little to blame. Great cost is thrown on railway companies (i.e. much injury is done the public) by standing orders (cast-iron orders) about gradients, etc. The company's solicitors order the company's engineer to comply with standing orders at all costs rather than introduce any special clause. The consequence is that we see much money spent and a most inconvenient level-crossing placed at the entrance to some large town, where a steep gradient for two hundred yards on a straight piece of road (to which there is no objection) would have avoided all difficulty. The responsibility in all such cases should be thrown on the company, and Government interference abolished.

7. REFORM IN LAND LAW.

The transfer of stock in the name of two trustees in the funds is done in a few minutes at small expense. The transfer of land in South Australia is done in a few minutes at small expense at the Government registry. The transfer of land in England requires an uncertain time and cost--usually some weeks, and 5 per cent on the purchase money; sometimes months, and 10 to 25 per cent on the purchase money. It is equally expensive and slow in the register counties of York and Middlesex. The Acts of Brougham, Bethell, Cairns, to facilitate transfer have not materially reduced the evil. In many cases, however much the land may be wanted for public or other purposes, the lawyers tell you that no title can be made without a private Act of Parliament--so effectually has the land been tied up.

The common idea is that this peculiar difficulty, delay, and cost in the transfer of land arise from the law of inheritance and the legal machinery of entail; but stock in the funds can be virtually entailed and made to "follow the estate," and yet this stock can be transferred just as readily as any other stock.

The explanation is known to every lawyer; but I have met with more than one Member of Parliament who, though blatant about entail, understood no more about the matter than a chimney-sweep.

The point is that, under English law, the trusts in the case of stock attach to the trustees, not to the stock; in the case of land, the trusts attach to the land itself as well as to the trustees. Hence, when I purchase stock of trustees I need not trouble about how they apply the purchase money; in the case of land I have to go into the whole title.

A simple illustration. I provide for a daughter £300 a year by putting £10,000 in the hands of two trustees in the funds. Should the trustees prove rascals, sell the stock, and decamp with the money, my daughter will lose everything; the purchaser from the trustees can hold the stock clear of all charges or liability. But if I provide for my daughter by charging an estate with £300 a year for her, then however wrongfully that estate may be sold, mortgaged, or otherwise dealt with, she gets safely her £300 a year. If the bank B has advanced money on mortgage on that estate, not knowing the existence of the charge of £300 a year for my daughter's benefit, the law simply says to the bank, "It was your business to know; you should have completely investigated the title before you advanced your money."

It follows, therefore, that if, with a Government Land Registry Office (say one for each county), you required the purchaser only to get in the legal estate, _i.e._ holding him not responsible for the trusts or the application of the purchase money, then land could be transferred exactly as money in the funds is now, in spite of all the complications of our law (or rather custom) of entail.

The law of entail in England (so called) is not what the popular orators suppose. The eldest son inherits really; that is, if there be no will, no settlement, or other disposition of the property. But there nearly always is. It is a very rare thing for the heir-at-law to take land (except some very small pieces) by the law of inheritance. As to entail, it is practically carried out by a continued system of surrender and re-settlement--a device of lawyers which is, in its historical development, an evasion (rather than a part) of the law. Nevertheless, I think it is a matter of importance that the shackles which fetter land should be loosened, and that the present powers of owners to tie up land legally should be very much curtailed. It is a sad proof of the way riches cling to the heart of man even when he is leaving this world, that, whatever powers of tying up land are sanctioned, an owner will usually exert them to the uttermost. He is leaving his property, but he will keep a hold on it fifty years after he is dead if he can. He will, after exhausting his powers in life interests, leave the residuum to an unborn child "in strict tail-male so far as the rules of law will permit;" and he will stick in a springing use to effect that, if his greatnephew, the Rev. George, should ever from an Anglican become a pervert to Roman Catholicism, he shall take no benefit under the will.

Now the fact is that all tying up is to the detriment of the public. No man can provide for all contingencies. Indeed he can see so little a way ahead that in a few years it frequently happens that all the careful provisions of the will are working exactly as the testator would have desired them not to work. Land tied up is always worth less to the owner because it is tied up; and we have seen that the interest of the commonwealth is the sum of the interests of all its component members. When you tell me that an estate is now of small value to its life-owner and unget-at-able for any public purposes, in consequence of a will made by a man who died twenty years ago, it appears to me that you shew me convincingly that we have not Free Trade in land.

I would propose that, either by will, settlement, or other instrument, an owner should be able to give any number of life interests, and nothing more; all trusts being placed outside the law. The first objection will be that if the powers of owners are so restricted, the desire for the ownership of land will be lessened: the value of all the land in England will fall. This might be so, I admit, to some extent; and it would favour the employ of the land for agricultural profit.

The next objection is that it would become necessary to give land (and money) directly to women without the intervention of trustees: that women do not understand business and require to be taken care of. My reply is that they always will require to be taken care of unless they are entrusted with the management of their own affairs. The loss to the nation, the expenses, the sacrifice of time and labour in trusteeships, have now assumed gigantic proportions. If women were given their own property to manage, some would (at first) fool it away: we know what high interest, adventurers, unprincipled persons, etc., can effect. But each woman defrauded or stripped of her property to starve would be a warning to all the rest: in a few years women would manage their property just as well as men. I believe they would manage it better. A smaller percentage of women would gamble on the Stock Exchange, the Mining Exchange, Austrian and Spanish lotteries, and horse-races; and a much smaller percentage of women would embark in desperate "business" speculations, heavy purchases of foreign produce, etc.

It should be noted that in cutting down the powers of owners to legally tie up, I do not interfere with honourable trusteeships of any kind not enforceable by law or in equity. Such exist now, and more largely than is generally supposed. The absolute devises and bequests to friends (not relatives) are often on private (not expressed) trust to provide for illegitimate children or numerous other purposes which a man may not wish to parade to his family.

8. EQUALISING OF TAXATION.

There has been no readjustment of the land tax for very many years. It is a property rate, and originally was rateably levied at four shillings in the pound. By the small increase in value of some land, the large increase in value of other land, since the days of Queen Anne, it has now become unequal in the highest degree. The farm A, gross rental £100 a year, has a land tax of £5 a year; the suburban estate B, gross rental £1000 a year, has a land tax of £2:l0s. a year. The land tax assessors were sworn in annually (twenty years ago, and may be still) to assess the tax equally, but it was perfectly understood that the tax was to be collected every year on the old long-standing assessment.

Suppose that the estates A and B above were reassessed, and that the land tax on A was put 15s. per annum, that on B £6:15s. a year. Land tax can be redeemed at about thirty years' purchase. The effect of the readjustment would have been to take about £120 from the owner of B and give it in a lump sum to the owner of A. It is probable that the present owners of both A and B (or predecessors under whom they claim) had purchased the estates A and B after the land tax had become fixed on them, and the amount of land tax would then have been fully considered in the price paid.

We see thus that in the case of the land tax, as we saw above of the tithe, and as is also the case in any tax permanently on, a disturbance of the existing taxation is inequitable. This point is so much misunderstood that I will give one more illustration.

I am purchasing an estate, intending to farm it myself. There are 400 acres of land, and I reckon the land worth 30s. an acre. I am willing to give twenty-five years' purchase. I find the tithe is £100 a year. I therefore propose to give twenty-five times £500 = £12,500 for the land. But before the bargain is completed I find that the tithe is £150 a year. I at once sink my bid to twenty-five times £450 = £11,250, and buy the estate at that price. The next year some financier "equalises" the tithe, and my tithe is reduced to £100. Is it not clear that, by the equalisation, I pocket £1250, and somebody else loses it?

New taxes when imposed should be "equal," as far as can be arranged. When a legacy duty was imposed, it would have been just to impose a succession duty also. But, after the legacy duty had been imposed twenty years with no succession duty, it was similarly inequitable to put on a succession duty; for quantities of land had been bought in the interval of twenty years at a slightly higher price than if there had been no legacy duty, because there was no succession duty.

The proposal for "equalising" taxes is usually put forward in order to get a somewhat larger gross income from the taxes equalised, or as a political cry. Nothing can be more absurd than the cry that the land is over-burdened in comparison with other property. There is no comparison in the case. Some land being tithe free, some land tax free, some nearly rate free, those persons who do not trouble themselves to master the political economy may yet be satisfied that the "burdens" of the land affect neither the farmer, the labourer, nor the produce of the farm; the burdens fall _wholly_ on the landlord (a farmer with a lease being, as above shown, a part landlord). The efforts of some Conservative orators for the last twenty-five years to prove the contrary are erroneous in the reasoning; or I should say, much of the "reasoning" does not hang together at all. Without formally refuting these efforts, I repeat that they are fully refuted in the result.

It is therefore that I have insisted above that, in order to carry out the proposed ransom of the land, a new Property Rate, separate from and in addition to all other taxes, is necessary. Though the manner of levying a National Property Rate which I have proposed lends itself very nicely to getting in such an extra tax, it is not at all on that ground that I have suggested the new manner of levy. The object of the new manner of levy and the sycophants is to get every piece of land in the country into the hands of that man who can make most of it; including herein as an important item the cheap and easy acquisition of land required for Government, public and commercial (railway, etc.) enterprises.