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CHAPTER XVIII.

RESTRAINTS ON THE NATURAL DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH.

UNDER this head we class all defects in the laws relating to property, by which its possession or enjoyment by the rightful owners are rendered insecure.

The delay, the expense, and the uncertainty of obtaining justice in our courts in cases of disputed property, are too notorious to require illustration. They amount, in too many instances, to a complete denial of justice, and must go far to damp that sense of security for the full enjoyment of wealth, which is the principal stimulant to its production and accumulation.

One of the most obnoxious parts of the present system, is the extreme difficulty of recovering debts of small amount. It was to remedy this evil that Lord Brougham's bill for the establishment of courts of local judicature was introduced in the last session; and the rejection of this valuable measure by the House of Lords was one of the most impolitic and unwise steps they have for some time taken.

To Lord Brougham the nation looks in confident anticipation that he will redeem his pledge of prosecuting this and other equally expedient reforms in the law of property, undeterred by factious

opposition, and untired by repeated failure. His labours in this department have already produced valuable fruit; but his is not a mind to be satisfied with partial improvements. The late and the still sitting commissions of inquiry into the state of the laws cannot fail to be productive of great eventual good. Their task, we hope, will not be confined to consolidation and simplification merely, but will admit of radical amendments. The laws that relate to entail, primogeniture, and inheritance require revision-more especially in the case of Scotland. The general registration of landed property and of all claims upon it, as proposed in a bill which was likewise thrown out in the past session, is highly desirable. And an accurate registration of births, deaths, and marriages is much needed, not merely for statistical purposes, but for furnishing authentic evidence in cases of disputed property.

A reform of the criminal law is no less expedient in an economical point of view, than of the law of property. The very greatest of all impediments to the accumulation of wealth and the zealous putting-forth of industry is an inadequate protection of life and property against fraud or violence. Our system of police in the rural districts, and, with the exception of the metropolis, in most towns, is exceedingly defective. În fact, it has deteriorated, instead of improving, from the date of its original institution by our Saxon ancestors. The mode of appointment and the execution of the duties of the magistracy-especially in corporate towns-requires, and, we hope, is on the point of receiving early revision. And the whole

system of secondary punishments, including the treatment of prisoners in the penal colonies, the hulks, and the jails and penitentiaries, has long called for that reform which it will, probably, before long receive.

The attention of the government has been very properly directed for some time to these points; but it is not enough for government to be willing to introduce improvements of this nature, unless they are supported by the good sense of the community. There is a spurious and overstrained humanity abroad, which lavishes its sympathies upon the criminal, and neglects the interests of the virtuous and irreproachable portion of society which is his prey. There are philanthropists who seem to desire an almost complete impunity for offences, and to forget altogether that punishment must be dreaded in order to operate as a preventive to crime, and must be severe in order to be dreaded. The punishment of death has been already removed from many offences hitherto capital; and this relaxation might perhaps be carried still further with advantage;-but unless there is at the same time an increased severity in our secondary punishments,-some of which have, till lately, partaken of a character the very reverse of penal-the convict being placed in a better situation than he occupied before his offencethe safety of society will be fearfully endangered.

CHAPTER XX.

CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS.

We have thus run over, as fully as our limits permitted, the most prominent artificial impediments which either the officiousness of legislation, or its inadequate accommodation to the changing circumstances of society, has opposed in this country to the development of its industry, the increase of its aggregate wealth, and the just and natural distribution of that wealth among those who contribute to its production. These legislative blunders will amply account for the present strange, and indeed paradoxical, situation of so ingenious, enterprising, and laborious a people. Every step towards their correction will, we are confident, act like the removal of a heavy weight from the springs of industry. Each succeeding step will be rendered more easy of execution; and when they are all completely surmounted, it is impossible to doubt that the mass of physical suffering and unmerited privation we now see constantly around us will have wholly disappeared.

When our agriculture has been relieved by the permanent fixation of tithe on an equitable basis, the extinction of church-rate, the reduction and improved levy of poor-rate, and other local taxes,

and the facilitation of inclosures; when our commerce and manufactures are wholly freed from the shackles of the system miscalled protective,' and our countrymen no longer prohibited from making the most of their superior skill, ingenuity, knowledge, and mineral resources, and procuring the produce of much labour in other countries by a comparatively small outlay of their own; when a revision of our monetary system shall have furnished to commerce a just and unvarying measure of value and instrument of exchange; when freedom has been given to credit, and the last of the great legislative monopolies, those of banking and the manufacture of credit money, is abolished; when the bulk of taxation is shifted from the shoulders of the productive to those of the unproductive classes, from industry upon wealth; when justice is rendered cheap, certain, and easy of access, and property further secured by the improvement of our criminal and civil judicature; when the abominable abuses of the poor-law are corrected, and idleness and vice no longer forced by premium, but repressed by punishment; finally, when our colonial possessions are viewed in their true light, and treated as so many additions to the cultivable territory of the three kingdoms-so many landed estates at the command of any British subjects who choose to make use of them-so many rich and unlimited fields for the profitable employment of British industry and capital in the growth of raw produce to be exchanged for the manufactures of the mother country; and when methodical arrangements are established on this principle for facilitating the removal of any local