Notes
1 To all unbiassed reasoners it will probably appear that no right whatever can be better founded than that which every man willing to employ himself in agriculture has, to claim a certain portion of the district in which he happens to be born, he becoming bound to make just compensation to those by whose labour that spot of ground has been fertilised.
It belongs to the community to establish rules by which this general right may become definite, and to prescribe a method by which the distribution may be made and the compensation ascertained.
The rules adopted for this purpose may be more or less prudent and equitable, and more or less favourable to the poor or to the rich, without any heavy imputation on the spirit of the laws; but not to recognise such a right at all, not to have established any rules by which its claims may be ascertained and complied with, ought to be accounted essentially unjust.
Means may certainly be discovered by which this general right of the community in the property of the soil may be so clearly and practically ascertained that the private landholder shall have no occasion to be afraid of suffering injury, or material inconvenience, when any share of that public right is claimed.
The plan of a progressive Agrarian law is an attempt towards the discovery of such means; but the problem is difficult, and the imperfections of a first attempt may deserve to be excused.
Numberless are the variations which might be devised for accommodating the principles of a progressive Agrarian to the supposed rights and legal possessions of the body of landholders.
Suppose it enacted in any country that a progressive Agrarian shall take place, in respect of barren ground at all times, but in respect of cultivated lands only when the leases expire, excepting those farms which exceed a hundred acres in extent. Thus the landholders would have an option given them: if they did not choose to submit to the operation of the Agrarian, they might avoid it by adopting leases of long duration and farms of small extent.
2 Or such extent of ground as may be cultivated to advantage by one small plough and the ordinary family of a peasant, which may be supposed a husband, wife, and three children of various ages. This may be called the standard farm, and ought to vary in its extent according to the state of the country. In countries little cultivated and thinly inhabited, it ought to be large (which does not exclude small options), to encourage the cultivation of new land by those who are possessed of some considerable stock; where the country is well stocked with inhabitants, it ought to be small, that each may have a share. Thus two hundred acres may be no improper standard in North America; from sixty to twenty in Europe; in Holland, Egypt, and Bengal from six to two, which last is considerably larger than the original standard of ancient Rome.
3 If in any parish there have been no claims made for seven years, and yet unexcepted land remain, all persons even from other counties may enter their claims there. The tendency of these restrictions is to diffuse the benefits of this law, together with the inconveniences which may attend it, equally over the whole state. Perhaps a better regulation might be that cultivated lands should be open to claims only one year in ten, but uncultivated lands always, and to the claims of all persons within that county, or from any other county in which the uncultivated lands were already appropriated in small allotments.
4 Perhaps some additional precautions might be requisite in the manner of constituting the assize. It ought to consist wholly of persons versed in agriculture, and if possible one-half landlords, the other claimants, or rather if that could be had (as after some years it easily might) the whole to consist of persons who have already got the standard farm and no more. Yet each party might be allowed to demand a reference to arbitrators rather than an assize; these arbitrators to be chosen by the parties, and paid after a certain handsome fixed rate. This would induce some capable persons in every small district to distinguish themselves for honest and fair dealing in this line of business.
5 The right of the landlord can only extend to the improved value of the soil; for he may still retain a farm of the standard extent, which is to be supposed in all cases at least equal to his natural share of the soil. It might be difficult, however, for an assize or arbitrators to separate the original from the improved value of the allotment to be given off, and if they find an equivalent for both, no great injustice will be done the claimant, provided the landlord remains alone liable to the land tax, with all its additions: an equivalent for both they can easily find, as it must be no other than a reasonable rent for the ground, on a short lease of seven or ten years only; for that which might be accounted a reasonable rent for a longer lease would comprehend an equivalent for some part of the improvable value; to which, according to the principles assumed, the proprietor can have no right.
The claimant ought to have his option of paying a reserved rent, or a ready money price. The first will commonly be his choice, but if not, the landlord may not be obliged to receive more than one-half the value in ready money price. The reserved rent ought to be ascertained not in money, but in the staple produce of the country, in justice to the landlord, who ought also to have a right of distraining in the most effectual manner for his security. The claimant ought further to show thatjie is able to stock his farm in a proper manner, or that he is possessed of three times the reserved rent in goods or in cash.
6 Might not the former occupant or landlord, if he has any personal objection to the claimant as a neighbour, be entitled to substitute another in his room on the same terms? In which case this attempt so disappointed ought not to be reckoned as one of the claimant's options.
7 The number of options is limited chiefly in order to prevent vexation of the landholders in the beginning, when the number of claimants must be very great. But perhaps there is greater danger of the landlords contriving in every stage to defeat the just pretensions of regular claimants.
8 The farm thus annexed shall be exempted from any new claim for forty years. But no person shall accumulate more than four such farms, nor shall he who has alienated two farms in this way have right to make any other option at all.
9 This does not obstruct the increase of estates, by the accumulation of reserved rents, to any extent.
10 Some doubt may be entertained of this article, as the allotments are not limited by any minimum below which they must not fall.
11 The acquisition of such rights would render the future assignation of settlements more difficult and complicated; besides, it ought to be a leading principle in every plan of reformation respecting property in land, that the present possessions of landholders having been acquired bona fide, under the protection of established laws, ought not to be disturbed or broke in upon, except just so far as natural justice and the greatest good of the whole absolutely require, and no farther: from whence it will follow that the persons, who are by this statute restored to their natural claims, shall not be allowed to claim or possess, even for a time, any more than the precise extent of such natural claims; while, on the other hand, those who are previously possessed of more than their just and natural right may be permitted to hold it until such time as a special claim, founded in natural justice and ascertained by this statute, be set up against their possession. The actual possessions of landholders are in part congruous to natural equity, and in part not: even in those parts of their extent which are not congruous to natural equity, no change is to be made until a particular claim founded in that natural equity requires such change to be made. On the other hand, in those parts of their possessions which are congruous to natural equity, viz., the right to improved value, such changes as the general good may require are to be made, in the manner of holding or occupying their possessions; a just equivalent being, however, given them for their rights and possessions themselves.
12 No injustice is done to the farmers by this restraint. They are already in possession of land on terms which they thought not ineligible: it will prevent their entering into cabals to retard the progress of the law, and to obstruct the breaking down of their farm by such claims; they will be rather concerned to promote a progress which enables them the sooner to convert into property the most convenient part of their farm -- that, to wit, which lies nearest to their residence.
13 It is not impossible to devise such regulations, and though not absolutely necessary, they may prove beneficial in some degree. Suppose, for example, that on the death of any lord the vassals paid one year's rent to his successor; that on the death of a vassal, one year's rent was remitted by the lord; that during the minority of their lord, the vassals paid one-tenth more rent, and during the minority of a vassal one-third was remitted; that the bachelor vassals paid one-tenth additional rent, and the bachelor lord received one-tenth less; that the vassal having eight children was exempted from one-tenth of his rent, having twelve from one-fourth.
14 Almost all of Agrarian laws have proceeded on the plan of restricting that extent of landed property which an individual may acquire, and not the nature and the force of that right with which the landholder is invested. Thus endeavouring to establish an equality of fortune, they have been found impracticable, and, could they have been carried into execution, they must have proved detrimental to the progress of industry and of commerce.
15 In manufactures and commerce nations may be led to think that their interest requires them to rival and obstruct one another; with respect to the progress of agriculture, it is hardly possible that they can fall into such a mistake.
It is manifestly the interest of every nation, whose lands are cultivated to the highest degree, or, being encumbered by ancient rights, cannot be brought into that state which is most favourable to the highest cultivation, to wish for and to promote the establishment of independent agriculture among its neighbours; for the cultivation of that country having become stationary, it must owe any increase of prosperity and population to manufactures and foreign commerce; and the more that other nations are occupied in cultivating their soil, the greater quantities of manufactured commodities will they stand in need of, and the less will they be able to furnish to themselves; the more, therefore, will they contribute to the prosperity of manufacturing nations near them.
To Britain, considered as a manufacturing and commercial nation, it might prove highly advantageous that regulations of the nature of a progressive Agrarian were established throughout the continent of North America.
16 Britain has derived considerable advantage from Bengal, Bihar, and Orissa, as states, and proposes to continue to reap the same, if not greater.
The advantages and profits arising from trade are earned by the exertions which that trade requires; they are due to the persons by whom it is carried on, and into whose pockets they immediately enter; and they may be supposed in some measure reciprocal to both countries. But what right can Britain, as a state, have to increase her own revenue by large sums deducted from a revenue raised on the subjects of Bengal? How does it become her justice or her magnanimity, to receive such a tribute, unless repaid by the communication of well-ordered laws, and a reformed police?
To transfer the whole code of English laws to Bengal is an attempt not much less absurd than to transfer the laws of Bengal to England, though probably some particular institutions of each country might be beneficially transferred to, or copied by, the other.
But the administration of the English laws, and that happy plan according to which justice is dispensed in this country, by the intervention of a jury, in all cases of any importance, and the privilege of a speedy trial, if the prisoner desires it, may no doubt be adapted to any system of laws that has been established in any country; it would render the best still more beneficial, and the worst not intolerable to the people living under them.
17 The distresses of Ireland, whatever they may have been, must be allowed by impartial observers to have arisen far more from the abuses of landed property than from the restrictions of commerce, and to have been aggravated by the want of an establishment for the maintenance of the poor, similar to that which does so much honour to England, and in consequence of which the domestic peace of that country is so easily preserved, without curbing the bold and manly spirit of the common people.
This establishment the legislature of Ireland will probably soon have occasion to take under consideration; and some benevolent men seem already to have turned their thoughts on that object.
It will not become them to be deterred by the errors and embarrassments into which England has fallen from attempting a scheme which justice, humanity, and the tranquillity of their country seem equally to require. It ought rather to animate their generous endeavours that Ireland may hope to be the first nation that shall exhibit this most humane and liberal of all municipal institutions in a state of improvement, which may render it equally beneficial to the rich and to the poor.
It must be much more difficult for England to reform the abuses of her ancient establishment than it ought to be for Ireland, profiting by the example of her errors, to establish at once a new system of more uniformly beneficial effects.
The vexation of settlement disputes might be avoided by throwing the supernumerary poor of a parish on some county fund, and the supernumerary poor of a county on the general funds of the nation.
The encouragement of idleness might be prevented by giving the clergyman of each parish a negative on the disposal of the poor's money; by the interposition of which he might prevent its being given to the undeserving, or too liberally to any. Nor ought it to be suspected that the ministers of religion would abuse this sort of power.
After all, to lay open the uncultivated lands of the State to claims made by the industrious poor for the sake of cultivation, will be found the most solid foundation of any new establishment for the maintenance of the poor, and the most effectual expedient for rectifying the abuses of an old system, or moderating the demands for its support.
The practice of letting estates to intermediate tenants or middlemen is one of those grievances under which the industry of the Irish poor has laboured. That practice will gradually be laid aside; but the change, it may be apprehended, will not prove equally beneficial to the cultivators and to the landlords, as in all reason it ought to be.
Such is the influence of habitual modes of thinking that those who exclaim most against the exorbitant profit of the middleman seem not to perceive that it is unjust, because it has been squeezed from the humble industry of the cultivator without any equivalent given for it; but think that it is so, because it is kept from being paid into the chests of rich and indolent landlords, whose title is not better founded than that of the other.
Suppose that an estate farmed by a middleman who draws from it a profit equal to the rent he pays had been kept in the landholder's own management, and the rent raised to the same degree as by the middleman, wherein would there have been any difference in respect of the tenants and cultivators? Would they have suffered less injustice if deprived of this great share of the produce and just reward of their industry by the landlord, than if deprived of it by the middleman? What right can the landlord have acquired by purchase, which he cannot transfer to the middleman during his lease?
The middleman is described to be one whose business and whose industry consist in hiring great tracts of. land as cheap as he can, and reletting them to others as dear as he can. May not the landholder and his ancestors be described as a race of men whose business and whose industry have for successive generations consisted in buying up large tracts of land as cheap as they can, and letting them to others as dear as they can?
It must be difficult to say what right the one set of men, more than the other, can have to appropriate any share of the produce of additional industry employed by the cultivator in improving the soil: the injustice and absurdity of the landlord's claim to improvable value may appear in the strongest light when considered in this delegated form.
Were the Sovereign of Ireland an absolute monarch, and did he interpose when the middleman's lease becomes vacant, to prevent the landlord from exacting more rent than he formerly received, would not that award be made in conformity to natural justice, and the best principles of that public economy, according to which the rewards of industry ought to be distributed?
19 The more unlimited that power is with which any monarch is invested, the more it seems incumbent on him to attend with peculiar care to the protection of the common people. Other ranks have their privileges, their wealth, and acquisitions of various kinds, to protect and support them; but the common people have none of these, and not having representatives in any legislative council, as under limited monarchs, the sovereign himself is in fact their representative, and cannot but perceive that he ought to be in a more particular manner the guardian of this helpless class of men.
Perhaps even the oppression of the taille, if it must not be removed, might in some degree be alleviated, by communicating to. the cultivators a more permanent right in the soil which they cultivate.
The condition of Metayers, who pay a certain proportion, generally one-half of the produce of their farm, might receive a very great improvement, attended with great increase of profit to the landlords themselves, if that payment was to be regulated by valuations of the produce made at considerable intervals.
It is not probable that the narrow views of the landholders will permit them to embrace such a general plan. Could the sovereign authority be employed to compel them, it would be a very glorious and beneficial exertion of absolute power.
It may be received as a general maxim of very important application, that if any rent, tax, taille, or tithe is to be levied from the produce of cultivation, and to bear proportion to the increase of that produce, the interest of the cultivators, and of the persons having right to the tax, will be most effectually combined, not by an annual variation of its amount, nor by a rate fixed for ever, but by a periodical valuation, returning after fixed and considerable intervals.
Unlimited monarchs themselves, in resuming and regulating the improvident grants which their ancestors have made of Crown lands, forests, and domains, find it requisite to use much tenderness, and to take many precautions for avoiding odium, when these resumptions are to be made for the advantage of the treasury alone (see Compte rendu an Roi, par M. Necker). But if the leading object of such resumptions was understood to be a desire of accommodating the industrious poor of the neighbouring districts with small independent settlements in full property, such a benevolent measure, while it might be made to promote the increase of the revenue very much, could not fail to meet with the national applause.
20 Even in Great Britain, although the whole legislative power rests in the hands of the landholders, it is not too sanguine to hope that time and favourable occasions, and general views of public good, which, in this fortunate country, have sometimes triumphed in part over the strongest partial interests, may give rise to some innovations favourable to the independent settlements of the labouring poor.
At the conclusion of this or some future war, may not the indulgence granted to disbanded soldiers be extended so far as to enable them to make small settlements after the manner of the progressive Agrarian law in the uncultivated lands of their respective parishes or counties.
May not the present method of dividing and enclosing commons, which, though favourable to cultivation, is known to curtail very much the independent rights and comfortable circumstances of the lower orders of the poor, be exchanged for some plan more allied in its aim to the provisions of a progressive Agrarian.
If the present system of division is still retained, might not the common so enclosed be made liable to options similar to those of a progressive Agrarian law, to commence after it has been fully improved, or fifty years after the division?
Might not persons possessing land in right of the Church be enabled, under proper limitations, to grant leases of very considerable duration on farms of a certain small extent? Might not some plan be devised by which the interest of the Church, of the present incumbents, and of the industrious poor, might be consulted at the same time?
If ever England or Ireland should set to the other nations of Europe an example of the highest prudence and advantage by establishing a periodical valuation of tithes, it may be hoped that some provisions allied to those of the progressive Agrarian may be made to enter into that plan, for the sake of increasing the amount of that gross produce whose value is to be periodically ascertained.
If ever any plan shall be carried into execution for a sale of Crown lands and forests, it may be hoped that so favourable an occasion of consulting the independence of agriculture, by providing for the labouring poor opportunities of permanent settlements in small farms, will not be neglected; and that even the consideration of a little more increase of the revenue which might arise from pursuing other measures will not be put into comparison with it.
Ought not every estate which descends to heirs in tail to become subject ipso facto to some branches of a progressive Agrarian?
Might not the heir of such an estate be enabled to make void the entail over one-third or fourth part of the estate, and to alienate it at pleasure, provided it is broken down into small farms of a single plough each, on leases of 300 years, or made subject to the options of a progressive Agrarian law, before this alienation takes place?
21 The wisest and most beneficial schemes are in some men's opinions effectually turned into ridicule, when it is shown, or even asserted, that they cannot be carried into execution. The consideration of such plans may, however, put to shame the abuses of those which are established, by showing how widely they differ from what is beneficial or wise. If the exhibition of such a contrast cannot remove pernicious abuses, it may in some degree restrain the rapidity of their increase.
Various objects have engaged the enthusiasm and excited the efforts of mankind in successive ages: schemes of conquest and settlement in one age; plans of civil and religious liberty in another; manufactures and commerce have now their turn; and perhaps in some not very distant age the independence of cultivation, established on a just regulation of property in land, may become the favourite pursuit of nations, and the chief object of public spirited endeavours. The present tendency of men's opinions and inquiries, promoted by the actual state of the most enlightened nations, seems to lead towards it.
" Sic poscere fata,
" Et reor, et si quid veri mens augurat, opto."