The Dorset County Express and Agricultural Gazette.
Dorchester, Dorset, England, 1879-10-07 00:00:00

THE LAND QUESTION.

It Is pleasant and satisfactory to discover that,
notwithstanding the temptation under which the
combatants lie to leave the central position and to
' fight about trifies,—on the whole, and allowingfor the
readiness of one side and the other to make mistakes,
the discussion on the land question still keeps to the
real point. Lord Burghley made, it is fru., an
Indiscreet speech at Exeter' in which he took it for
granted that in the designs of Providence what are
called the luxuries of life, even good education and
certainly all artistic attainments, wars intended to b
reserved for the landlords; farmers' wives being
made for herdswomen, and farmers' daughters for
dairymaid.. But even beneath that foolish outburst
of clan feeling lay the truth which, in • wrong way,
Lord Burghley was trying to inculcate, that among
farmers, as among manufacturers, tradesmen, and
workmen, &return to the more simple and lees expensive
ways of their fathers is a necessity of the situation.
What, however, is most satisfactory is that the
advocates of the present system of laad tenure are, in
fact, admitting the foundation principle of the
reformers, that the existing system must be tried,
jodged, and Accepted or condemned, upon the question
whether it produoes the greatest exi to the people
of the country. What we feared was the cry from the
landlords that the land wait their very own, held under
a tenure established by • law too ancient to be changed
without • breach of the decalocue. They have happily
be wise enough and moderate enough, and perhaps
far-seeing enoturit, to take the other ground that the
existence of law, on the whole telling in their favour,
is of advantage to the community and less disadvan.
e farmers vas than any other
=could to the
devised.
. . . .

Eardil-Cio-t-coTt -that. ground at Winchoomb. He
even led off by admitting that he was ready to adopt a
cheap. simple, and direct method of land transfer • so
that if there were any estates to sell they might &Una
hands with the least possible cost and the smallest
partible circumlocution. So far, at all events, he and
the reformers are agreed. Bat he avoided the difficulty
that at present the land is so tied up that it cannot
a kends at all ; it ie held to • dam . Mortgages
rtnave impoverished the owner, and debt may
render him inefficient as a landlord; he may long to
sell a part that be may efficiently farm the remainder
but custom that lies upon him like a frost has bound
him in irm bands, and the law aids the process by
which be and his estates are kept tied together. It is
something that when a landlord is free he should be
able to sell a field without • series of useless legal formic
costing sometimes half the value of a small patch of
land, and for that Lard Nacho is to be thanked ; he
and Mr. Osborne Morgan will, we trust, be found in
the same lobby when the latter brings forward his
proposals. But this is not enough; we went some-
thing more. Lord Bloke, being conscious of this,
offers m something more in the dim future which, with
him, we devoutly bvs will never arrive. He began
by laying down the sta-tling proposition that the sok '
bondage under which the agricultural interests lay was
the one of Ripply and demand, whereas the complaint
against the present system is that another
the bondage of WI law of entail, is preventrgdan
operation of the law of supply and demand; for one
class Is deum:dout what it cannot get from another
clams which be ready to supply it were it
unfettered. Again Lord M, saw- It, and with •