The Sun.
London, England, 1860-12-07 00:00:00

THE ' SUN, LONDON, FRIDAY EVENING, I3ECEMBER 1, 1860.

TEE VOLUNTAER MOVEMENT.

Last evening there was a muster of the 29th
North Middlesex in the Riding School of the
Regent's Park Barracks for the purpose of witness-
ing the distribution of the prizes for the best shots
at rifle practice in the Ist company. The men
having formed into square, Capt. Ross presented
the first prize, a handsome silver tankard, to Private
George W. Stonham ; the second prize, a Westly
Richards rifle, to Private Tilley, and the third prize
to Private Maryon. In presenting the prizes Capt.
Ross impressed upon the effectives the necessity of
attending and becoming efficient in drill as well as
in rifle practice if they wished to make efficient
Volunteers. Viscount Enfield is expected to take
practical command of the corps in the course of the
ensuing week.
Capt.-Commandant Walters has received an
official notification from the Lord-Lieutenant that
the Secretary at War has sanctioned the formation
of the Central London Rifle Corps (40th Middle-
sex) as a separate battalion, with the following
establishment :—One lieutenant-colonel, one major,
one adjutant, eight captains, eight lieutenants,
eight ensigns, one surgeon, and one assistant-sur-
geon, and 800 men, divided into eight companies of
100 men. Major-General Sir Jas. Yorke Scarlett,
K.C.8., has consented to accept the honorary
Colonelship, and has promised to use his best en-
deavours to induce military gentlemen of position to
fill the vacant posts of Lieut.-Colonel and Major.
On Monday last a rifle match took place between
10 members of the Colchester corps for one of Wil-
son's patent breech-loading rifles. The ranges were
300, 400, and 500 yards, five rounds at each range,
and 10 competitors entered the lists. Notwith-
standing the unfavourable state of the weather the
shooting was good, and the prize was carried off
by Captain Bishop, the commanding officer of the
corps, who in 15 shots made 16 points.
On Monday the 10th Essex (Witham) corps was

inspected by Captain-Adjutant de Crespigny; who
expressed himself generally satisfied with their
efficiency.

The members of the Stratford and West Ham
corps have presented to Sergeant Martina, valu-
able watch and chain as a token of their appre-
ciation of his services as drill master. The watch,
which bears a suitable inscription, was presented
by Captain C. Pelly, the commanding officer.
The career of the Brandon Rifle Corps has jest
been inaugurated with a public dinner, Major-
General Angerstein presiding. Among the gentle-
men present on the occasion was Mr. W. Anger-
stein, M.P. for Greenwich, and the hon. gentleman
in responding to the toast of " the House of Cola•
mons," expressed his hearty approval of the move-
ment, stating incidentally that in the constituency
he represented there were 5,000 Volunteers. He hal
supported the Government in the vote of several mil-
lions to put the country in a satisfactory state of
defence, and he could meet his constituents witl
an assurance that he had done right. The Baron de
Bliss, lord of the manor, offered the use of his
park as a practising ground, and Capt. Tyssen, of
the part of the Volunteers, gratefully accepted tha
offer.

A mounted rile corps for the town of Cardiff will

soon be formed and equipped. Seventy gentlercet
have put down their names, and it is expected
that more will be obtained. The uniform is to con•

sist of a scarlet tunic, helmet and plume, drab
trousers and overall boots. Ground in the vicinity
of the town has been selected for practice, and ap
proved by the Government inspecting officer, 60
that in a short time the corps will be in full drill.
A mounted rifle corps is also to be formed in Pem-
brokeshire, having Haverfordwest for its centre,
the strength of which is to be from 80 to 100.

be a scientific shipbuilder. In order to complete
the plan, however, this board must have the con-
trol of all the dockyards throughout the kingdom,
and must have general power to direct the mode in
which these establishments should be managed.
By such means alone can that unity of management
be secured which shall secure reasonable efficiency
and economy in the vast establishments at Ports-
mouth, Devonport, Chatham, and Pembroke.
The attempt to organise this system is pro-
bably the real cause of Sir Baldwin Walker's
resignation. The new Comptroller will of course
possess the necessary qualification of being an
eminent professional shipwright, but it is also to
be hoped that he will be not less eminent for that
stern independence and honesty of character which
so admirably distinguished Sir Baldwin Walker.
There are no public establishments so demoralised
by the spirit of corruption as the Royal Dockyards.
Not long since they were the Naples of Eng-
land. The doings of Lord Derby's famous Secre-
tary to the Admiralty are not yet forgotten. But
it must be admitted that few men have done so
much as Sir Baldwin Walker to elevate the tone of
the dockyard officials, or to prove to them that real
merit, not political influence, is the real passport
to advancement. It must be admitted, in tendering
his advice in matters of patronage and promotion,
he has been actuated by a genuine zeal for the pub-
lic service, and a desire to reward true merit. There
is no man who more thoroughly appreciates straight-
forward honesty than the Duke of Somerset, nor is
there one more capable under the present circum-
stances of selecting the best man for the office of
Comptroller of the Navy.—Daily News.

MR. BRIGHT AND FREEHOLD LAND

SOCIETIES.

(From the Morning Post.)
When Mr. Bright tells the people of Birmingham
that he is no lawyer, we willingly give credence to
his assertion. If, however, the public should be
ungenerous enough to require further evidence, we
beg to refer them to the hon. gentleman's recent
speech, which contains a mass of misstatements
which it is difficult to excuse even on the ground of
invincible ignorance. Why then does Mr. Bright
trouble himself about matters which, though they
may in one sense belong to the science of political
economy, have a more immediate and direct rela-
tion to that province of law of which the hon. gen-
tleman professes to know nothing ? Mr. Bright's
object is transparent. The power of the territorial
aristocracy, titled and untitled, is the spectre which
haunts the imagination and destroys the equanimity
of the great free trade agitator. Last year a sweeping
measure of Parliamentary Reform, which was to
swamp the landed interest of this country, was pre-
pared by Mr. Bright, and paraded by him through-
out every portion of the manufacturing. districts.
That measure, however, so entirely failed to attract
the support of the Radical party that its author very
wisely abstained from exposing his crude
work-
manship to the criticism of the House of Commons.
Parliamentary Reform being at the present time in
a state of suspended animation, and likely to con-
tinue so, Mr. Bright has sought a new weapon with
which to attack the aristocracy ; and on this occa-
sion, forgetful of the danger of playing with edged
tools, he has taken down from the rusty armoury
of /the law those dreadful implements of legal
cruelty and domestic oppression—primogeniture
and entail. According to Mr. Bright, if the Legis-
lature of this country would borrow from France
and America that system which excludes the heir
male from the right of succession to land in case
of intestacy, a second golden age would dawn in
England, every rood of land would maintain its
man, and an army of sturdy yeomen, armed with
household suffrage, would take the place of those
country gentlemen and Boeotian farmers whose
" confined notions" recently formed the subject of
one of Mr. Bright's fervid harangues. It is not
true that primogeniture exists in this country to
anything like the extent which the hon. gentleman
represents. Every person entitled absolutely to
the ownership of land can devise his estate to whom-
soever he pleases. We all know that eccentric
testators, disregarding the duty which they owe
to their families, occasionally bequeath real pro-
perty to strangers, and even to charities which are
authorised to hold land in mortmaiu. This proves
that the law, when the ownership of the property
is absolute, is not of a very restrictive or illiberal
character. But if a father is so negligent that he
does not make a will, there surely can be no hard-
ship in the law declaring that, as regards land, the
eldest son shall stand in loco parentis to his brothers
and sisters. If the property be small, a home at
least may be kept for the younger members of the
family; and, if large, the heir is under a moral
obligation to afford them some adequate means of
settlement in life. That this obligation which
depends upon affection and kindness, is, as the rule,
sacredly performed, no one who is acquainted with
the condition of English society can deny. Cases
of injustice are, in fact, too rare to furnish the
slightest excuse for that agitation which Mr.
Bright would excite—not for the benefit of
younger ehildren, but for the political object of
weakening and destroying the legitimate and
wholesome influence of the proprietors of land. If
we take the example of France, where the laws of
testamentary disposition are extremely restricted,
the indefinite subdivision of real property has
produced innumerable evils. The estate which, at
one time, supported in decent comfort an entire
family, in the course of a few generations becomes
so split up that the owners either sell their
interest or descend to the level of peasant proprie-
tors, who scarcely can draw a subsistence from
their small plots of ground. Such a system is fatal to
agricultural improvement, and we may illustrate its
effects by an example which Lord Brougham men-
tioned in the House of Lords of an orchard in
France which, in consequence of successive sub-
divisions, ultimately left a single apple tree as the
inheritance of 18 separate owners. Is such a system
worthy of English imitation We believe that,
instead of introducing that class of sturdy yeomen
of whose intellectual and liberal qualifications Mr.
Bright so confidently speaks; it would pauperise the
country and generally tend to degrade all classes
of the agricultural population. But whenever Mr.
Bright finds himself in a diffieuly he instantly
appeals to America as the readiest means of extri-
cation. It may he true that labourers in the United
States usually obtain a dollar a day wages. but the
condition of the two countries is so entirely dissimi-
lar that no fair argument can be based upon any
statement of the kind. In the United States every
man willing to farm can ,by going to the backwoods,
obtain as much land as he desires. The population is
essentially migratory. An American tired of work-
ing in the large cities has only to go to Illinois or
Minnesota to be certain of obtaining a comfortable
subsistence. The labourers who remain behind have
therefore an excellent market, and obtain wages in
proportion to the comparative scarcity of labour.
But in England the population is overcrowded, em-
ployment is not always to be had, and consequently
no real analogy can exist between the two coun-
tries as respects the wages of labour, until all the
wild lands of the American Union have been sub-
jected !to the industry and enterprise of civilised
men.

But what is an entail ? Mr. Bright appears to
think that it is a perpetually inalienable estate,
which, devised in feudal times, has, for the benefit
of the aristocracy, been permitted to survive to the
present day. The English law abhors perpetuities,
and the only really inalienable estates which now
exist are those which the country for distinguished
services has united to peerages—for instance, to the
dukedoms of Marlborough and Wellington. The
rule is that no land can be tied up for a longer
period than lives in being at the date of the settle-
ment, and twenty-one years afterwards. The usual
course, whenever real property is resettled, is to
charge the estate with portions for younger chil-
dren, and to make those arrangements by means of
trusts which are conducive to the benefit of the
whole family. But there is another description of
property which also is subject to entail—we mean
peerages. If Mr. Bright, treading in the footsteps
of Mr. Locke King, should succeed in abolishing
entails, the dignity and respect now so deservedly,
entertained for the second branch of the Legisla-
ture would in the course of a few generations be-
come utterly extinguished; our peers would have
no means of supporting their rank and position,
and the country would, in fact, become as truly
Americanised as Mr. Bright wishes. We believe
that this movement, insidious in its object, is not
likely to meet with the support of any class of the
community. The English law of real property is,
we admit, unnecessarily vexatious and expensive
with regard to transfer; but this evil may surely
be remedied by means less disastrous than a mea-
sure that would sweep away a system which, woven
and cherished in the habits and sympathies of the
people, has tended to promote the wealth, the pro-
sperity, and the grandeur of England.

(From the Daily News.)
The Freehold Land Societies of Birmingham
have had a general meeting for the purpose of con-
gratulating one another on their successful progress,
and for the purpose of conferring together on the
best aride of further developing the great prin-
ciple on which they are formed. The excellent
speech of Mr. Scholefield, who presided on the
occasion,. summed up the chief results of the
movement, which, beginning less than fifteen
years ago, has gradially made its unobtrusive way
until its friends are now enabled to boast that in
the one locality in question there are compre-
hended within the sphere of its fraternity many
thousand members. Land being locked up by law
in large masses, and participation in its ownershila
in portions ever so small being mulcted by the ex

cesssive costs of transfer, the industrious majority
of the community despaired of being able to com-
pass the privilege and enjoyment which the
ownership of land infers. For their disqualification
was not merely social ; it was, and was felt to be,
likewise political. Parliament, consisting mainly
of the landed class, persisted in maintaining in the
counties the distinction betweeff freehold arid

chattel property as the basis of the franchise ; and
while it 'refused to render the purchase of land
practically possible by persons of moderate or
humble means, it likewise persisted in declaring
that a freehold of forty shillings a year was a good
title to vote, while the annual payment of f3rty-
nine pounds rent was not. And to this preposterous
doctrine and practice the law of Parliament still
adheres. A certain amount of loose talk there has
been by men of opposite parties about their will-
ingness to reduce the occupation franchise in coun-
ties from forty-nine pounds to ten ; but even this
has not been done, and were it done the theory of
law would stand thus—either you must pay a £lO
rent or you must possess a £2 freehold ; so great is
the difference held to be between the dignity mad
trustworthiness of ownership and of mere occupa-
tion. One would suppose that if our rulers really
, contemplated the change adverted to (which the
experience of last session has caused many to
doubt), they would see the importance of giving
new facilities for the acquisition of freeholds ; for
i if something of the kind be not done; it is clear
enough that the tenant occupiers in counties must
considerably outnumber the fee farmers—a con-
summation which our Conservative wiseacres can.
hardly contemplate with satisfaction. Be that as
it may, however, we know that in both Houses of
the Legislature there exists a deeply rooted repug-
nance to any and every measure that tends to
promote the acquisition of land by small inde-
pendent people. Among the governing body there
is a fixed superstition that the exclusive possession
of the soil, like the exclusive direction of the State,
properly belongs to the hereditary few; and their
mode of defending their monopoly of both is curi-
ously identical. No absolutely insuperable wall of
privilege exeludes the man of moderate thrift and
plebeian intelligence from either; and whenever the
question of monopoly is raised one is always met
with the plausible answer—ls not the gate open ?
why do you not come in ? But substantially, as we
all know, this is a mere cheat. In the case of land,
the laws of title and transfer form a species of sunk
fence that few single individuals have the moral
courage or strength of purse to go at. It was to
bridge this antiquated fosse that Freehold Land
Societies were first formed; and experience has
proved that their organisation enables men to get
over the difficulty together who as isolated indivi-
duals could never have thought of attempting it.
By purchasing estates with the common fund and
then distributing them in lots, men come to be
possessed of building sites, or of small portions of
pleasure and garden ground, which they may not
only call their own, but feel to be as much their
own as the domain of the premier part of England.
From this sacred foothold of the soil he can neither
be driven by coercion nor beguiled by chicane on
account of any lawful act he may do or lawful word
he may utter. He is a free and independent man
as far as his homestead is concerned.

Mr. Bright, in one of his telling and trenchant
speeches, enlarged considerably the field of view.
After dwelling with much force of illustration on
the benefits the system was likely to confer upon
its members, he proceeded to urge the expediency
of renewed assaults upon the existing law of
intestacy with regard to land. The specific effect
of the law which hands over the whole of a man's
real estate to his eldest son should he happen to die
without a will, or should his will happen to be in
any particular informal, is to limit the supply of
land in the market, and by consequence to render
its purchase in joint stock oftentimes impracticable.
Where a man, having an estate of £5,000 a year,
dies, bequeathing his property equally between his
four sons, after payment of certain legacies to his
daughters, the probability is that the executors will
direct that the land should be sold, as the only means
of enabling them to discharge their trust. Even
though the eldest son should seek to retain the
family residence and a portion of the property, and
borrow money to enable him to buy in somewhat
mere than his own distributive share, there will
still be a certain portion brought to public sale.
And were every such property similarly dealt with
in case of intestacy, there would soon be a healthful
current of circulation established throughout our
social system, analogous to that which take place
with regard to the continual transfer of all other
kinds of property in the realm, And though in the
first instance it mey be true that the increased
supply of the article now monopolised would tend
to lower the biddings for its purchase, it is most
certain that in a very short time this exceptional
consequence would be more than countervailed by
great and permanent enhancement of value. We
need not be at the pains to theorise on the subject.
The experiment has been fully and fairly tried out
before our eyes and on a vast scale in Ireland. Ten
years ago the transfer of real property there was as
tedious and costly as it still is here. To meet a
great emergency Parliament consented to give
unprecedented facilities of purchase, and to create
a new tribunal for the purpose of compelling sales.
At irst there was a depreciation of value, and many
cheap bargains were obtained, especially of the
larger and less saleable properties. But in a very
short time the supply created the demand ; com-
petition raised the biddings ; and while the supply
continued, and still continues, to he greater than
ever, it is an incontestable fact that the selling price
of land in the sister country never was so high,
while the owners in fee-simple never were so
numerous.