The Dorset County Express and Agricultural Gazette.
Dorchester, Dorset, England, 1858-12-28 00:00:00

MR. BRIONT ON LANDED PROPERTY.

In the course of Mr. Bright's speech at Glasgow,
whieli occupied 01le hour auil All minutes in the
very, and to which 2,700 persons listened with much
attention and apparently with great approval, the
hon. member for -Birmingham thus dwelt upon our
legislation as it shoots the poseession of land

And there are other results that will come to this
country, in use you ever obtain a fair representation of
the people. I have been in Scotland a good deal for the
lest three or four years, and often before then. I have
found; in travelling over your country, that your land is
not the land of the people of Scotland, hut that it is in
p 05861411011 Incmanner exclusively, which is not found to
he the cue with regard to any other property compared
with the whole number of the people, of a small hand-
ful of proprietors. Now, let no man say that I am
about to assail any landed proprietor in Scotland. I
have received many courtesies from them, and not a few
courtesies from the most eminent and most distinguished
among them. I speak only of a system which arises
from legislation, which is diametrically opposed to all
these great principles of political economy which we
and you struggled for many years to plane on our statute
book in the shape of legislation in matters of trade.
Land is the bash' of your Industry. Is there any reason
why land 'Mould not be as free as machinery, or ships,
or household furniture, or cattle, or the goods and manu-
facture, in your warehoused? If freedom be the law of
right, of wisdom, and of benevolence with regard to all
other kinds of property, how AIX the reverse of freedom
be any other than the law of mischief and injury when
applies! to land? (Applause.) You travel, I was going
to nay, from the rising of the SUR to the going down
thereof, on one single estate in Scotland; north or south,
cut or west, wherever you go, you ask whose land you
are on, and it belongs to Lord This or Lord the Other, or
Mr. Somebody-else. These are happy mortals, it may
be said, who possess these great territories, and so, per-
I lope, they would be if it. were poaaible for any man,
however well disposed, adequately to answer the
responsibilities which snob possessions lay upon
him. You find on these vast estates very few
tenants, generally few of an agricultural popu-
lation at all. There is little social freedom—there
hi little industrial freedom there is still less
Political freedom In districts such as these I am descri-
bing. I don't know myself very well how men can
breathe freely when they llnd themselves continually—
but I suppose habits help them to it—on • coil not a
morsel of whioh can they call their own, nor can they
ever hope to call any of it their own, until they take
their last long deep in that which soelety shell allot
them, I sin no advocate for laws to foroe • division of
land. I do not want any landlord to be compelled to
have a greater or smaller number of tenants ; but I say
that a system of legislation in laws of primogeniture
and in laws of entail, which Is intended to keep vast
estates In one hand through euooessive generational,
to (invent that occasional dispersion and Mange of
property which is found so advantageous in every other
kind of property —/ may that state of thing* la full of the
insult pernicious consequences not only to the agrioultu-
rid classes, but to all other Mums of our countrymen,
for all are affected by It. (Applaue.) I recollect seemg
a fanner one evening riding away front an inn that I
teed staying at in the Highlands, and I asked MI Wile.
They said he was a farmer in some neighbouring glen,
' and that lie hail * prodigioue fans, At one thus my ni-
-1 forwent odd he recollected there were 14 good farm on
that fens, and that these 14 familia+ always mintage('
to lend at least one of their WM to get a Arstmlites uni-
voreity education, I don't want any law to etrip OM one
fernier of hi. farm and rectors the fourteen, but laws
that interfere with the tree ammo of transactions lit
lend, which aid and keep up mit tranuotione in all
estate, giving to me man this PUMA' over a whole tern.
tory, whereby he has at Me Moment' tenants and
labourers alike, is a stele of things not oonsistent with
that freedom which the people of Htigland and
in toy opinion, are alike entitled to, (Appleuee,)
Your agricultural popolation have no chance of rating in
the world, They eau awe to tilatigow, as mores of
thotteande of tlllllll have come here from the Highlands
and from Ireland, and, forged by the unfavourable air.
eumetatteew Iti which they may Mid themselves., they
may bottom Who hoot their native nountry, end may
form imitation! in the far PllOlllO or beyond the Atlantis,
Hot I think we are ballad Ito freemen—and we in thie
town are eatteolally bound, for we only have the power,
to take the Initialise in the goat question, Ito far ac
we ere Mlle by stir remmientatatives in Parliament, and
I have no desist it woold be tole of the onnewmeitoes
of a real Morin Hill, to apply thinte greet torinolitlem
of political 'Quaintly whiell RN the gamed and 'Harter
of industry ati fully to the great property in lend II we
have alniady applied them to properly enjoyed In trade.
(Applause.)