stitute a first charge upon the estate, and be registered as such in the Land and Mortgage Register. It would be left to the landlord and tenant to determine in what way the debt should be extinguished; but a limit of time within which the charge should be liquidated might be fixed. Where the value of the improvements approached or exceeded that of the fee-simple of the land, it would be a question left to the parties, assisted by the Board of Arbitration, to decide whether the landlord should buy up the tenant's right, or the tenant the landlord's.

8. He would not be inclined to look with favour on Ulster tenant right, at least where that right implied a payment for the "good-will," in excess of the value of the improvements made by the tenant or his predecessors, as he would consider this another form of double ownership. The Board of Arbitration would carefully discriminate between the value of improvements and the value of the good-will "per se;" and would treat the former in the way already suggested, whilst it would consider the latter as a servitude on the estate, to be redeemed in the manner most favourable to the landlord.

9. Having done his utmost to place the relations of landlords and tenants on a satisfactory footing, and having removed all difficulties in the way of free alienation, he would next occupy himself with the creation of farmer proprietors, i.e., of a middle-class proprietary. Remembering the colonisation of waste lands by Frederick the Great, he would see what was to be done in the way of diminishing competition for land already under cultivation, by organized settlements on uncultivated lands, keeping in view the fact that land, which it does not pay to reclaim for the object of rent, will yield sufficient returns when tilled as property. He would, in the next place, by means of rent-banks, and on the Prussian system of amortisation, facilitate every transaction by which a landlord might desire to sell his property to his tenants; the rent-bank advancing the capital sum to the landlord, and recouping itself out of a percentage added to the rent. By means of the same machinery the State, acting through the bank, would buy up all the

land that came into the market, and sell it to occupiers. The object of the State not being to make money, but to create proprietors without loss to itself, the principle of competition would not be allowed to act in these sales. Two conditions would have to be laid down: 1st, that the farm should be of sufficient size fully to maintain the proprietor and his family, according to the highest scale of comfort known in the district; 2nd, that the intended proprietor should possess the necessary capital to work it. Where these conditions were fulfilled, the actual occupier would have the right of pre-emption. Where they were not fulfilled, he would have to be bought out, and the farm would be given to the candidate who fulfilled the conditions. Where several such candidates presented themselves with equal claims, the choice of the candidate would be decided by lot. On entering into possession, the future proprietor would have to sign a bond, by which he engaged, until he had paid up in full, neither to let nor sublet, to keep the farm-buildings in repair, &c. On his failure to fulfil these engagements, the bank would have a right to evict him on repayment of the rates already paid by him.

10. All these objects, he believes, would be attainable by use of the credit of the State, and without any cost to the taxpayers. Any spare sums of money derived from church property, or other sources, he would employ in establishing agricultural schools and model-farms in every part of the island, and in imparting an elementary knowledge of agricultural science to the national schoolmasters.

Such, we believe, is the kind of programme which our imaginary legislator, arguing from a general kind of Prussian analogy, and with only a general knowledge of the Irish Land Question, might recommend.

It must not be forgotten, however, that being, under the hypothesis of the case, a foreigner, he is, on the one hand, unacquainted with the political difficulties of the question, and, on the other hand, possessed of that belief in the omnipotent and beneficent action of the State, which it would not be easy to impart to an Englishman.

VI.

THE LAND SYSTEM OF FRANCE.

T. E. CLIFFE LESLIE.

THE object of this essay is to describe the Land System of France in respect of the distribution of landed property in that country, with the rural organization in which it results, and to examine its causes and effects. In considering its causes, laws and customs relating to property (including succession and transfer), and to tenure, of necessity form prominent objects of inquiry; but their operation is so bound up with that of economical causes and conditions, that we should miss in place of obtaining clearness by separating what may be termed the legal from the economical class of subjects of discussion. It ought, too, to be premised that although political causes, in that narrow sense of the word which relates merely to the constitution and action of the State, do not fall within the scope of the present essay, yet the fact of their existence ought not to be altogether ignored. There are such causes, and their disturbing influence is powerful. A striking illustration of the potency of this class of causes is afforded in the fact that M. Léonce de Lavergne, in his celebrated work on the 'Rural Economy of Great Britain,' refers the progress of English agriculture during the last two hundred years, in the main, directly or indirectly, to political institutions, political liberty, and political tranquillity. The influences and effects of the French land system cannot then be fairly estimated without taking into consideration matters excluded by the non-political character of these pages. On the other hand, it will be pertinent and material to their purpose to show that much which is commonly ascribed

in this country to political causes (in that wider sense which comprehends all the institutions of a country, especially those relating to property in land), as the chief agencies regulating the division of the soil in France, and the modes of its cultivation, are in reality traceable to the natural play of economic forces, aided, indeed, by the law of France, but not the part of it supposed.

The contrast between the land systems of France and England, two neighbouring countries at the head of civilization, may, without exaggeration, be called the most extraordinary spectacle which European society offers for study to political and social philosophy. The English census of 1861 returned 30,766 landowners and 249,461 farmers.* The latest official statistics in France,† on the other hand (following an enumeration of 1851, now in arrear of the actual numbers), reckon no less than 7,845,724 "proprietors," including the owners of house property in towns-a number which may be assumed to denote the existence of eight million such proprietors now. Of these, according to the computation of M. de Lavergne, about five millions are "rural proprietors," of whom nearly four millions are actual cultivators of the soil. The official tables themselves return no fewer than 3,799,759 landowners as cultivators, of whom 57,639 are represented as cultivating by means of head-labourers or stewards, as against 3,740,793 cultivating their land de leur mains. This last figure is again subdivided into 1,754,934 landowners cultivating only their own land; 852,934 who, in addition to their own, farm land belonging to others as tenants, and 1,134,190 who work also as labourers for hire. But these figures, as already remarked, are now in arrear; and we may accept as a close approximation to the actual situation the following estimate by M. de Lavergne :-" Of our five millions of small rural proprietors, three millions possess on the average but a hectare‡ a-piece. Two millions possess * Farmers :-Men, 224,066; Women, 22,916. Graziers, 2,449.

Statistique de la France. Agriculture, 1868' (Résultats Généraux de l'Enquête Décennale de 1862). Not quite two acres and a half.