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

cessiive costs of transfer, the, industrious majority
of the community despaired of being able to com- I
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 between freehold and
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 ayear was a good
title to vote, while the annual payment of forty-
nine pounds rent was not. And to this preposterous
doctrine and practice the law of Parliament still
adheres. A certain amount of look 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 and
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
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, wo 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 excludes 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 es 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
I 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
more 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 may 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 first 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 raial the biddings ; and while the supply
continued, alrd still continues, to be 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.