that with which our modern notion of English law makes us familiar. It could not indeed be surrendered without reducing society to a deadlock, for there are and must be occasions on which it is necessary to resume, in the public interest, land the usufruct of which is enjoyed by private individuals, after due compensation is made for the present value of the land in question.

The land of any fully settled country is limited. Its adequate cultivation, even under the freest system of importation, is of paramount importance. The largest development of scientific agriculture is not only the measure of population, but also effects the fullest possible distribution of many secondary necessaries or comforts of life. Part of a nation may subsist on imported corn, but a much smaller part can obtain imported meat. But the maintenance of cattle in any country is for the most part relevant to the cultivation of arable land, to the rotation of crops, to the growth of succulent roots. If therefore the arrangements under which land is possessed, or let as farms, are such as to check the development of agriculture, and thereby to diminish the resources or reduce the comforts of a community; or if the system of land tenure is unfavourable to the distribution of wealth, the laws which bring about such a result are fairly open to revision, and the causes which contribute to these evils should be met by the necessary remedies. The common adage that 'a man may do what he will with his own' is false in reference to such property as can be indefinitely increased; it is not only false, but destructive, if it could be extended to the possession of land.

The expression, 'free trade in land,' is used a little

inaccurately. It is commonly employed to designate the abolition of those powers of settling land which are conferred on its possessor by the law of this country, by which he can, by deed or will, grant an estate in land to unborn persons; and for the reversal of a custom which prevails over the greater part of the United Kingdom, by which those estates in land which are known by the names of fee-simple and fee-tail are conferred (in cases of intestacy in fee-simple, or failure of extinguishment and intestacy in fee-tail) on the eldest son. It is manifest that these customs and rights tend to aggregate land in few hands.

All rights by which individuals are enabled to determine the course of an estate after their own death are mere creations of law. Except for reasons of public policy no person can have the smallest claim to control the fortunes of the living after he is dead, or even to devise that which he has accumulated or inherited. Still less can he claim to extend his control over those who are living in favour of such as are unborn. A settlement of land, therefore, is the exercise of the will of a man who is dead, in constraint of the will of a man who is living, and every settlement, whether it be of land or of personal property, is a hindrance to free exchange on the part of the person whose discretion is thus limited. A removal of these constraints or hindrances, an abolition of these privileges and customs, is not free trade in land, but a removal of certain obstructions which preclude a large portion of the soil from being brought into the market. Those who advocate what is called free trade in land, advocate the subdivision of large estates, the creation of a class of yeomanry, and the development of peasant

proprietorship; for they anticipate that should these customs be taken away, larger quantities of land would be annually submitted to sale in smaller parcels.

Some of the reasons which are alleged in favour of these changes are political. With these we have nothing to do. Some of them are economical, of which there are principally two. It is supposed that small cultivation is more productive than large. It is supposed that the subdivision of land has a direct effect in elevating the condition of the working classes, in giving them a real stake in the country, in encouraging thrift, in diminishing pauperism. Land as an investment, pays, it must be admitted, but a poor percentage. But it is certain that it always pays a higher rate than is given as interest in the post-office savings' banks, the obvious and nearly the only investment of the poorer classes. As I have said before, however, land as an instrument should be distinguished from land as an investment, and a class of peasant owners would use land in the former way. It is possible that the minute division of holdings is an economical evil. It is also possible that the accumulation of real estate is another, and a greater economical evil.

Correctly stated, free trade in land consists rather in the removal of the hindrances which the law puts on the conveyance of land. These are, the long period required to constitute a valid title, and, thereupon, the tedious and expensive recital of the title, the tax imposed on its transfer, and the professional charges of conveyancers. Many of these restrictions are traceable to the power of settling land, some are merely legal rules, the relics of far more stringent regulations, originally intended to save the rights of the Crown, or the reversion to the State;

some are relevant to the class interests of legal practitioners. In short, free trade in anything is not only to be referred to the quantity offered for sale, but to the facility with which an exchange can be effected, when any part of the object, be it great or small, is offered. If the custom of primogeniture and the power of settlement were instantly and entirely done away, and no person were enabled to grant a less estate, either by deed or will, than that which is called a fee-simple, it does not follow that there would be free trade in land. The change must be followed by an alteration of the conditions and processes under which a valid conveyance can be made. The interests of the great landowners are protected by the powers of settlement and the custom of primogeniture; but free trade in land is only indirectly affected by these peculiarities of tenure.

I have adverted in a previous chapter (ix) to the protection which the law gives to certain recognised practitioners, and to the equally protective arrangements of trades-unions. These rules are, as far as the favoured class is concerned, a means by which competition is checked and remuneration increased, though they are often said to be in the public interest, as securing the efficiency of the practitioner.

After these limitations and explanations we shall be better able to illustrate the effect of protection as it is generally understood; i.e. the assistance given to manufacture or agriculture by the levy of duties on foreign produce, these duties being intended, when they are moderate, to check imports, and when they are heavy to totally exclude them. Analogous to these protective duties are bounties, that is, sums of money paid out of the public

income to exporters of certain goods, or occasionally to those who are engaged in particular industries, the continuity of whose produce is considered to be of public importance; as, for example, whale fisheries.

Protective enactments and bounties have both originated in the belief that it is expedient to give the direct assistance of law to particular industries. If every producer of every kind were protected, foreign trade might cease, and, as far as regards home trade, everybody would pay more, i. e. give more labour for what he gets, than he need have given if the trade were not protected. Such a system prevails, at least as far as manufactures go, in Munich, where every craftsman belongs to some guild or the other. As a consequence, all manufactures in this city are bad and dear. But it is hardly possible, and were it possible it would be certainly futile, to protect everybody, and to thoroughly regulate the employment of capital. All protection then, to be effectual, is partial; and, just as we saw before, when speaking of protected labour (p. 95), that those who combine in a trades-union may be said to mulct other labourers, so it has, with equal pithiness, been said that all protection means robbing somebody else; i. e. constrains somebody to pay more for what he wants than he would have paid had his market been unrestricted.

It is clear that protection is unnecessary when capital flows of its own accord and fully into the protected industry. It is because, under particular circumstances, capital is not so advantageously employed in certain callings that the State attempts to divert capital from a more productive to a less productive channel. If protection is needed to sustain a manufacture, the very act implies