It may be said that it is not easy to distinguish between a tenant and a purchaser. A man takes a lease of land for a thousand years at a rent of a penny an acre. Is he not to be considered a purchaser, although he takes the land for a limited term and is subject to a rent? Add a penny to his rent, and take a year away from his term, he is still a purchaser. Continue this process, and you may have him paying a rent of 41. 2s. 6d. an acre, and with a term of only ten years. He is then clearly a tenant. At what step in the process did his position change from a purchaser to a tenant?

Such an argument has no practical force. It must be met by drawing an arbitrary line at some reasonable point. Say that a tenant, whose rent is not less than three-fourths of the value, and whose term does not exceed forty-one years, shall not be disturbed in consequence of any settlement or incumbrance affecting his landlord's interests.

It is inconsistent with justice that a man should hold land at a certain rent, and for a certain term, without any claim except that he took the land for a different term and for a different rent. A man takes a farm today, and demands that a law shall be made which would enable him to sell his lease next day for several hundred pounds. This is to give him a property which he did not purchase or earn, merely because he threatens to commit murder if he is kept to his engagements.

However, no demand founded in justice ought to be refused, merely on account of the improper manner in which it is demanded. I must not refuse to pay a creditor because he presents his account or demands payment in an uncivil manner.

I have made these observations on the origin of property in land in order to show that the State retains the power of modifying it from time in accordance with the general interests of the community. This right of private property in land is a political not a natural institution. "Nam propriæ telluris herum, natura neque illum, Nec me, nec quenquam statuit."

What justice requires is that changes in the law

should not be directed against any particular persons, but that all who are in similar circumstances should be treated in the same manner. A land-tax of ten per cent. would not be unjust if it was thought necessary for the security of the kingdom; and there would be as little injustice in a law which modified the rights of property for the same object, even although the result should be equivalent to a tax by causing some diminution in the value of the property.

It is sometimes supposed that a change in the law would be unjust to purchasers under the Landed Estates Court. I see no grounds for that opinion. The Act of Parliament which constituted the Court did not give a guarantee against future legislation. To do that is beyond the power of Parliament. of Parliament. What the conveyance of the judges gives is the perfect right to the land, subject only to the adverse rights mentioned in the deed, and to such obligations as may afterwards be imposed, either by the purchaser or by the authority of Parliament. It may almost be said that the latter comes within the former case, as the House of Commons is the lawful representative of the purchaser.

It could hardly be contended that the purchaser with a parliamentary title should be exempt from all Acts passed for the relief of the poor, or that the area of poorlaw taxation should not be altered, and yet such changes might have the effect of giving his poorer tenants a substantial interest in his estate.

What the purchaser has a right to insist on is, that no law shall be specially directed against him, and that no rights shall be set up which were in existence at the time of his purchase, but were omitted from the deed of conveyance. But in common with all the subjects of the realm, he must take subject to all regulations that may be made by lawful authority, whether they increase or diminish the value of his property. The purchaser, by the fact of his purchases, places himself in a new relation to a certain number of persons, which imposes on him some very important duties, and it is for the State to determine whether those duties shall be enforced

by law or trusted to his own conscience for their fulfilment.

The following changes might be made in the law of real property, and they do not violate any natural or political right.

First, the law of primogeniture should be abolished, and all the children of the same parents, and their descendants should have equal rights to the land of their direct or collateral ancestor. Under the influence of this new law absenteeism would quickly disappear. Some of the children of an absentee would sell the estate which descended on them, and for which, not having seen it, they could entertain no special affection.

No lease nor agreement between landlord and tenant should be liable to any stamp-duty.

No settlement or encumbrance should prevent the owner of land in possession from having the following power-First,-He may make any lease for any term not exceeding forty-one years at a rent not less than threefourths of the full value, or competition rent. Second,He may take a fine on granting a lease. Third,-He may agree that the tenant shall be entitled to tenant right as above defined. Fourth, He may agree with his tenant to give him compensation for improvements.

If a lease is made for a shorter term than forty-one years, the landlord should not be permitted to distrain for rent. If a lease is made for a shorter term than forty-one years, and without tenant right, all poor-rate and county cess should be borne by the landlord.

No proceedings should be taken to recover any arrear of rent which accrued more than a year before the commencement of the proceeding.

In the absence of a written agreement, the tenancy should determine on the first of November, and require a year's notice to quit.

The arbitrator should have power to award parliamentary tenant right to any tenant who had fairly earned it by his outlay.

The tenant should be entitled to the trees he planted, without the necessity of registering them.

II.

THE LAND-LAWS OF ENGLAND.

BY C. WREN HOSKYNS, M.P.

MORE than a generation has passed away since a late Professor of Geology, in addressing the Royal Agricultural Society at their first country-meeting, held at Oxford, arrested the attention of his landed and farming auditory by the remark, that the perfect model of a Plough, and of a Ship, still furnished to the world of science matter of unsatisfied inquiry and speculation. The speaker cited these familiar instances, -and he could hardly have made a more skilful choice,-to illustrate the proposition that some of the deepest problems underlie our commonest uses, problems that seem never to wear out or to grow old by time, but reappear from age to age, linking the old world and the new, by questions that equally defy the decision of authority and the conquest of science.

In the interval that has elapsed since the words were uttered, in all the confidence of knowledge that continues to mark each "ignorant present time of the world's history-it will be admitted that the advances made by the "audax Iapeti genus" in the forms that plough both land and ocean, have given to them a force little intended, or even dreamt of, by the speaker: yet the challenge still remains that seemed almost antiquated then, and perhaps the words conveying it are but the formula for an equally pregnant future. Why it is that the most enduring questions should seem to link themselves often with what is most familiar to our daily

practice, is a matter of inquiry beyond the present purpose; but there are few experienced minds whose thoughts do not bear testimony to the existence of what may be termed standing difficulties in common things.

One of these, holding a place anterior to most-if not in point of time, yet certainly in importance-connected as it is with the history of our common inheritance, is that of the Laws of the Soil, the individual right to use, to hold, to dispose of it, by gift, or sale, to others, to transmit it by descent, or will, to the next generation,and, resulting out of all these, its general distribution amongst the various classes and members of the community.

Old as the subject is for it must be nearly coeval with man's social existence, and worn as much by modern treatment as by mere age, yet it can hardly be denied that it comes to us little simplified, if not rather complicated by time, and the usage it has found among the various families of our race, who have, in truth, exhibited few differences more characteristic, more ethnologically marked, than those arising out of national habits in reference to the soil.

The grazier, the sportsman, even that picturesque terror of our childhood, now rarely seen, the encamped gipsy, has each his ancient prototype in tribes and races having this feature in common, that to each of them the earth presented simply so much space to move in, and to use as suited their temporary wants or convenience. No law of meum and tuum was written upon the Waste, or grew out of it, for those to whom not even a fixed habitation had yet suggested the idea of 'property' in the land.

But as soon as tillage comes upon the scene, even in its earliest and rudest form, a very different claim to that implied in the mere surface use begins to develop itself. It needs no abstract description: we have it in familiar shape before our eyes, in the settlements of our own race in America and Australasia-where, in the dealings with some of the non-cultivating native races,