The advocates of a general redistribution of landed property in Ireland,
as well as those who are holding out to the agricultural labours of
other portions of the United Kingdom the Arcadian lure figuratively
known as the 'three acres and a cow,' will find in the work cited at the
head of this article the amplest materials for the justification of the
views they are pressing for adoption partly as a remedy for agricultural
distress, but essentially in application of the Socialist doctrine that
the people of a country have an inherent right to an absolute,
proportionate possession of its soil.
Mr. Laing's 'Journal' is, indeed, not a record of travel and adventure,
but a treatise, admirably written and replete with facts, in
demonstration of the great superiority of the Norwegian system of land
tenure over that of any other part of civilized Europe. His views have,
moreover, been to a great extent adopted in the numerous works that have
since been produced by British travellers who, after a rapid drive over
the main routes of Norway, have described in terms equally glowing the
happy and enviable condition of the _Bonde_ or yeoman farmer of that
country.
Considering there is much in common in regard to race, religion,
language, character, and civilization, between the inhabitants of that
interesting little country and its maritime neighbours--the populations,
more especially, of England and Scotland, it will be instructive, on the
eve of the agrarian revolution with which the United Kingdom is
threatened, to study and analyse the statements and conclusions of Mr.
Laing, and to trace the subsequent and present operation of the peculiar
land laws which he so highly extolled in the earlier part of this
century.
With that object we proceed to describe, almost in Mr. Laing's own
words, the condition of the peasant proprietors of Norway at a period
(1835) when, out of a population of 1,194,827, only about eleven per
cent. inhabited towns, the land in rural districts being held by 103,192
proprietors and tenants, the proportion of the two latter being
respectively seventy and thirty per cent.
'The Norwegians,' wrote Mr. Laing, 'are the most interesting
and singular group of people in Europe. They live under
ancient laws and social arrangements totally different in
principle from those which regulate society and property in
the feudally constituted states. Their country is peculiarly
interesting to the political economist. It is the only part
of Europe in which property from the earliest ages has been
transmitted upon the principle of partition among all the
children. The feudal structure of society with its law of
primogeniture, and its privileged class of hereditary
nobles, never prevailed in Norway. In this remote corner of
the civilized world we may therefore see the effects upon
the condition of society of the peculiar distribution of
property; it will exhibit, on a small scale, what America
and France will be a thousand years hence.... Here are the
Highland glens without the Highland lairds.... If there be a
happy class of people in Europe it is the Norwegian _Bonde_,
king of his own land, and landlord as well as king.'
This state of happiness is, according to Mr. Laing, the result of the
still existing _Odels ret_ or Allodial Right, under which, he asserts,
the land of Norway was always the property of the people, not of a
feudal class of high nobility. But although this assertion does not much
affect the main and practical object of our enquiry, it may be as well
to point out at once that, whatever might have been the inherent right
of every Norwegian to a portion of the soil on which he was born, Dr.
Broch, an eminent native authority, maintains that a considerable
portion of the land belonged anciently to the kings of Norway, and had
been acquired, as in other countries, partly by confiscation from
nobles. Those lands were leased and, gradually, to a certain extent,
sold. In the days of Roman Catholicism, the Church also held great
landed estates, which the State appropriated at the Reformation. No
inconsiderable part of the State domains was then leased, and, in short,
before the middle of the seventeenth century, leases comprised a little
more than half of the landed property of the country; while even in
1814, they constituted one-third of it. Later, the State lands, and
those which had been distributed among nobles at the Reformation, were
repartitioned among the bulk of the population or sold.
But to return to the _Odels ret_. It gives, Mr. Laing shows,
'to all the kindred of the Odelsmand in possession, in the
order of consanguinity, a certain interest in it. If the
Odelsmand should sell or alienate his land, the next of kin
is entitled to redeem it on paying the purchase-money; and
should he decline to do so, it is in the power of the one
next to him to claim his _Odelsbaarn ret._'
At the present time, the allodial right is acquired only by the
uninterrupted possession of the same person, his descendants or his
wife, during a period of at least twenty years, and it is lost if the
property has been in strange hands for three years. Testamentary
dispositions, in the case of persons leaving issue, are now limited to
one quarter of the testator's property; whereas before 1854, a testator
could not bequeath anything individually. Since the year 1860, also,
there is perfect equality between the two sexes in the division of real
and personal property. At the period when Mr. Laing visited Norway, the
division of land among children had
'not had the effect of reducing properties to the minimum
size that would barely support human existence. One sells to
the other and turns his capital and industry to pursuits
that would enable him to acquire the necessaries of life.
The heirs who sell, very often, instead of a sum of money,
which is seldom at the command of the parties, take a
life-rent payment or annuity of so much grain, the keep of
so many cows, so much firewood, a dwelling-house on the
property, or some equivalent of that kind. Few properties
have no such burthens.' He argued that 'in a country where
land is held, not in tenancy merely, as in Ireland, but in
full ownership, its aggregation by the death of co-heirs,
and by the marriages of female heirs,[5] will balance its
subdivision by the equal succession of children; and also,
that in such a condition of society, the whole mass of
property would be found in such a State to consist of as
many estates of 1000l., as many of 100l., as many of 10l. a
year, at one period as at another.'
'Norway,' our author urges, 'affords a strong confutation of
the dreaded excessive subdivision of land. Notwithstanding,
the partition system, continued for ages, it contains farms
of such extent that the owner possesses forty cows.'
On the whole, the farms appeared to him to be of various sizes: many so
large that a bell was used to call the labourers to or from their work;
while some were so small as to have only a few sheaves of corn, or a rig
or two of potatoes, scattered among the trunks of the trees. These,
however, were occupied by the farm servants, or cotters, paying for
their houses and land in work (_Husmoena_). Twenty to forty cows could
be counted on the large farms. In the district of Verdal
(Trondhjemsfiord) Mr. Laing saw beautiful little farms of forty to fifty
acres, each having a pasturage or grass tract in the mountains, where
the cattle were kept during the summer until the crops were taken in,
and upon each such out-farm, or _Soeter_, there was a house and
regular dairy, to which, he informs us, 'the whole of the cattle and
the dairy-maids, with their sweethearts, are sent to junket and to amuse
themselves for three or four months of the year.[6] We can well believe
that, in such circumstances, Mr. Laing found 'this class of _Boender_ the
most interesting people in Norway,' and that 'there are none similar to
them in the feudal countries of Europe.' He appears to have been more
particularly impressed with
'the farms large enough to keep a score of cows, six horses
and a small flock of sheep and goats, and to maintain a
family and servants in all that land usually produces,
leaving a surplus for sale sufficient to pay taxes, wages,
and to provide the comforts and necessaries of life to a
fair extent,' all which could be bought 'for 1000l. or
1200l., or even less.'
As regards the agricultural labourer, or cotter, Mr. Laing conceived
'his average condition to be that of holding land on which he could sow
three-quarters of an imperial quarter of corn and three imperial
quarters of potatoes, and which would enable him to keep two cows, or an
equivalent number of sheep or goats.' His wages are stated to have been
4-1/2d. to 6d. per diem, in addition to his food. It was consequently
'amusing to recollect the benevolent speculations in our Agricultural
Reports, of the Sir Johns and Sir Thomases in our midland counties of
England, for bettering the condition of labourers in husbandry, by
giving them, at a reasonable rent, a quarter of an acre of land to keep
a cow on, or by allowing them to cultivate the slips of land on the
roadside, outside of their hedges.' He also derides 'the agricultural
writers' who 'tell us, indeed, that labourers in agriculture are much
better off as farm servants, than they would be as small proprietors,'
for 'if property is a good and desirable thing, the very smallest
quantity of it is good and desirable.' It was obvious to Mr. Laing that
the forty families of two or three Norwegian highland glens, 'each
possessing and living on its own little spot of ground and farming well
or ill, as the case might be, were in a better and happier state, and
formed a more rationally constituted society, than if the whole belonged
to one of these families (and it would be no great estate), while the
other thirty-nine families were tenants and farmers.'
Mr. Laing found the happy agricultural population of Norway 'much
better lodged than our labouring and middling classes, even in the south
of Scotland;' and that no nation was at that period either better
housed, or so well provided with fuel. The standard of living appeared
to be higher in Norway than in most of our Scotch highland districts,
although the materials were the same, namely, oatmeal, barley meal,
potatoes, fish--fresh and salted--cheese, butter, and milk. He
understood that it was even usual for the yeoman farmers to have animal
food--'salt beef and black-puddings'--at least twice a week. At all
events, he says, four meals a day formed the regular fare, and with two
of those meals even the labourers had a glass of home-made brandy,
distilled from potatoes by the yeoman, who 'could malt and distil in
every way he pleased,' and thereby 'make free use of his agricultural
produce,' with the result of 'increasing the general prosperity,
improving the condition of the people, and promoting the increase of
their numbers.'[7]
There was, at the time of Mr. Laing's residence in Norway, 'small
difference in the way of living between high and low, because every man
lived from the produce of his farm, and observed the utmost simplicity
and economy with regard to everything that took money out of his
pocket.' Furniture and clothes, except the yeoman's Sunday hat, were all
home-made. 'Here was a whole population, in an old European country,
dealing direct with Nature, as it were, for every article, without the
intervention of money, or even of barter.' It was only the small yeomen
on the verge of the Fjeld, or in the glens, far above the level of the
land producing corn, and the inhabitants of districts less favoured by
nature, 'whose common bread consisted of the bark of trees, mixed and
ground up with ill-ripened oats; but even in their case, trout, dried
and salted for winter, was no inconsiderable part of their provision,
their houses being, at the same time, comfortable, though small, with
wooden floors and glass windows.
Apart from these exceptionally situated proprietors, Mr. Laing found
there really was 'no difference between the residence of a public
functionary, of a clergyman, or of a gentleman of larger property and
that of a _Bonde_, or peasant. The latter are as well, as commodiously
and even showily, lodged as the former can be, and the properties are as
good.' Mr. Laing, however, makes a reservation under this head in
respect of the 'cultivated classes,' as being indisputably superior in
mental acquirements to the yeoman farmer, and who lived in the same
manner as the corresponding classes in England.
Towards the end of his stay in Norway, Mr. Laing often heard 'from the
most intelligent men in the country' that the yeoman farmer lived too
high; indulged too much in expensive luxuries, as coffee and sugar; in
frequent and expensive entertainments at each other's houses; in
carrioles, sledges, and harness of a costly kind; and even in a horse or
two more than the farm work required; and he certainly thought this had
resulted in a general want of money among them to pay even the most
trifling taxes and other sums. A man with land worth three or four
thousand dollars, and with horses, cows, and all sorts of products in
abundance, was often at a loss for five or ten dollars. Nevertheless, he
was of opinion that 'the increase of the tastes and habits which belong
to property tended to keep population within the bounds of what can be
comfortably subsisted, and without which the increase of subsistence
would tend to evil rather than good.' It was, indeed, 'a good thing that
they all had the ideas, habits, and character of people possessed of
independent property upon which they were living without any care about
increasing it, and free from the anxiety and fever of money making or
money losing.'
Their subsistence, Mr. Laing exultingly and repeatedly points out, was
derived mainly from husbandry, carried on under less favourable
conditions of soil, climate, crops, and pasturage than in the Scotch
highlands;--
'but on the simple Norwegian system, to live on the produce
of the land being the main object, and the labourer (the
cotter) being paid chiefly in land, a good crop would be an
unmingled blessing; whereas in countries where agriculture
is carried on as a manufacture, a succession of good crops
may glut the markets, ruin the tenant, and even reduce the
money wages of the labourer. In Norway neither good nor bad
crops can affect the proportion of population to the land
that could in ordinary seasons subsist on it. Paying no
rent, the Norwegian yeoman farmer is not usually employed in
prospective improvements, but simply in raising food, so
that he can see at once whether the land is sufficient to
produce subsistence for himself and his labourers. If grain
and potatoes for the use of the farm, and a little surplus
for sale to pay the land-tax and buy luxuries with, can be
raised by the farm, all the purposes of farming in Norway
are answered.
On the subject of pauperism, Mr. Laing alleges that 'the dread of
poverty was less influential in Norway, where extreme destitution is as
rare as great wealth, and where there is so much less difference in the
comforts and consideration of the richer and poorer classes.' The
indigent were farmed out for a week or so at a time among the yeomen
farmers, 'whose poor-rate like the tithes of the Church, was too
inconsiderable to mention.' The state of property, and its general
diffusion throughout the social body, had also, he had no doubt, a
beneficial effect on the moral condition of the people. 'The desire for
wealth being considerably blunted, it was not the same actuating,
engrossing principle of human action, the spring of much that was evil
and immoral being thus removed.' Only one case of downright
drunkenness--that of a Laplander--had come under his personal
observation, and it was only on special occasions that the yeoman farmer
could be seen a little elated. His theory, however (we may remark in
passing), respecting the influence of property on the moral condition of
the people is not supported by other facts which he quotes, namely, that
owing to the restraints upon marriage, 'exercised as in Paris or London,
by a high standard of living,' the 'proportion of illegitimate to
legitimate children in Norway was 1 in 5,' while in a parish he
specifies, it was (between 1826 and 1830) 'as high as 1 in 3-26/136.' He
mentions that engagements between couples lasted generally one, two, and
often several years, especially in the case of servants in husbandry
waiting for a house and land to settle in as cotters. In such cases, he
says, 'it too often happened that the privileged kindness between
betrothed parties was carried too far,' and 'the betrothed became a
mother before she was a wife.'
We quit this painful phase of peasant proprietorship with the
observation that, notwithstanding a still wider diffusion of property
and of moral qualities which, according to Mr. Laing, that diffusion is
calculated to engender, 8.38[8] per cent. of the live children born in
Norway between 1866 and 1870 were born out of wedlock, the corresponding
proportion in 1836 having been 7.07 per cent. It is natural to find,
under these circumstances, that the marriage rate was 6.84 per 1000 of
the population in 1866-75 against 7.31 per 1000 between 1834 and 1836,
with a fractional decrease of the total number of births in the former
period, the average per family remaining slightly over four.
The ancient Allodial Right and the happy social system based upon it,
Mr. Laing found jealously guarded by the yeomanry, 'who have not only
the legislative power and the election of the Storthing' (or Parliament)
'almost entirely in their own hands, but also the whole civil business
of the community.' He may, therefore, well say, without fear of
contradiction, that 'the Norwegian people enjoy a greater share of
liberty, have the framing and administering of their own laws more
entirely in their own hands, than any European nation of the present
time;' and, further, that 'it is not a little extraordinary that almost
the only result' of the universal delirium of 1790,[9] 'which approaches
in reality to the theories of that period, has been the Norwegian
Constitution.'
The paramount influence of the agrarian class over the destinies of the
kingdom may be judged by the circumstances that the rural districts are
permanently represented in the Storthing by two-thirds of the total
number of members, limited by the Constitution to 114; and that
practically the suffrage is now universal, the principal conditions of
its possession being, under recent legislation, a qualification of age
(25 years) and a residence of five years in the country. It is well
known that the Parliament thus elected (under a system of double
election), with its _de facto_ single Chamber, subdivided for the more
rapid and effective discharge of certain business into what Mr. Laing
chooses to call an 'Upper House' and a 'House of Commons,' has, within
very recent days, in virtue of the largely predominant rural, radical
vote, exercised its power of impeaching and punishing, by fine and
dismissal from office, an entire Cabinet, for the crime of having
advised the King that his veto was not merely suspensive, but absolute,
in the matter of any Bill affecting the principles of the Constitution,
and that the questions in dispute between the Sovereign and the
Storthing were of a constitutional character, involving indirectly not
only the stability of a monarchical form of government, but also that of
the personal union between the crowns of Norway and Sweden--a stability
pre-eminently essential in both respects to the highest interests of
Scandinavia, and in no small degree also to the maritime and political
interests of this country. It is this form of Parliament that Mr. Laing
extols 'as a working model of a constitutional government on a small
scale, and one which works so well as highly to deserve the
consideration of the people of Great Britain.'
We have at last done with Mr. Laing's remarkable statements, views, and
recommendations; and the principal question we now have to consider is:
What is the latest phase (after an interval of half a century) of the
development of the peculiar social organization of Norway, and
especially of its system of land tenure, differing, as both do, from the
organization and system evolved out of feudality in Great Britain and
Ireland? We therefore intend to enquire: (1) Has the system of land
tenure in Norway prevented, as foretold by Mr. Laing, an excessive
subdivision of land? (2) Has a dead level of ease and contentment been
maintained? (3) Has the diffusion of land by a natural process, under
the widest form of home rule, kept the rural population of Norway within
the bounds of possible modern existence? (4) Has no pauperism affected
the taxation of landed property? and (5) generally, Is the Norwegian
yeoman farmer in a more thriving condition at the present time than the
tenants and agricultural labourers elsewhere, from whom is still
withheld the freehold possession of land to which, it is alleged by a
certain school of politicians, they have a natural right, disputed only
by monopolists and land-grabbers?
These are the questions we shall endeavour to answer with the aid,
exclusively, of the latest publications of the Norwegian Government. We
must, however, preface our replies by sketching roughly the influences
that have sprung into operation since Mr. Laing published the Journal of
his residence in Norway.
In his time the towns contained only about eleven per cent. of the total
population of the kingdom, whereas at the present moment the proportion
is double that of 1835.[10] This urban agglomeration, Dr. Broch shows,
has been 'due principally to causes which have operated in the rest of
Europe. Facilitated means of communication promoted the migration of the
agricultural population towards the towns, where the development of
industry and commerce offered the lure of gains or salaries higher than
those in rural districts.' One of the causes, he justly adds, of the
displacement of the population has been the immense and laudable
progress of public instruction, 'and the growing taste for intellectual
and material enjoyments which gave a great force of attraction to the
towns.'
As in other advancing countries, the attraction of towns, and the
facilities for obtaining employment in them, operate also in Norway, to
the disadvantage of the yeomen farmers of the present day. Among the
causes of the economic decline of the Province of North Bergen, the
Prefect mentions that
'the disinclination of young men of the yeoman farmer class
to take permanent service is very general in this district,
and is easily explained by the ease with which men in the
prime of their strength obtain occupation as labourers in
the fisheries. The great bulk of the day labourers do not
seek with any great eagerness for work in the fields, so
long as they hold previously acquired means sufficient to
provide them with the necessaries of life, however scantily.
As a rule, so long as want does not look in at the window,
they will not engage themselves for such work, except at
very good wages. The wages for a yearly labourer have
doubled during the last twenty years.[11] At the same time
the houseman has lost the command he previously had over his
workmen, and consequently does not get the same amount of
work out of them as formerly. Fishing attracts labour by a
larger immediate return, acquired with less bodily exertion
than in husbandry. It gives the population less taste for
harder work.'
We leave Mr. Laing in doubt whether the steam-engine could 'ever be
brought to perfection.' That doubt was speedily removed, and in 1852
Norway followed in the wake of other European nations by building
railways, their total length in 1883 having reached very little short of
a thousand English miles. Nor did their construction, with capital
raised chiefly abroad and punctually repaid, arrest the improvement or
the laying down of ordinary roads, to the extent of 4000 miles, between
1845 and 1875. In addition to this extensive opening-out of
communication by rail and road, the introduction of steamers on inland
waters and their employment as coasters and sea-going vessels, the
construction of telegraphs, and development of fisheries, of ship
building, of banking and other companies, and generally of trade and
industry, produced gradually a wide disturbance in the social economy
found by Mr. Laing. The expansion and prosperity of the towns, as well
as the more refined habits of life adopted by the clergy and the
officials of Government, were viewed by the yeomen farmers with a
jealousy that was undoubtedly the original cause of their present
radical proclivities, the old conservatism being relegated to towns,
contrary to the experience of other European countries, and particularly
to that of Great Britain, until the metaphorical three acres and a cow
were dangled before the eyes of its rural population.
Under all these influences, and we may include among them the effect of
a constantly-increasing number of travellers, equipped with the modern
appliances of civilization, and demanding accommodation and other
material comforts of a more and more superior character, the Robinson
Crusoe existence of the yeoman farmer, as depicted by Mr. Laing, has
suffered so much invasion that it has well-nigh disappeared.
In the matter of clothing, an assimilation to general, central European
dress has for years past been noticeable even in districts the most
remote, to the prejudice of home-spinning and weaving. Ancient silver
ornaments have been largely discarded by the women, and converted, first
into money, and eventually into articles of modern use or embellishment,
to an extent that now renders travellers more and more suspicious of the
Brummagem origin of the objects that remain for sale. And it is the same
with old furniture and with the multifarious knicknacks which travellers
less recent delighted to find in the country at reasonable prices.
The value of money has become more generally appreciated since Mr. Laing
admired the absence of all incentive to 'money-making and money-losing,'
and the previously unambitious character of the yeoman and his sons has
undergone a tolerably complete change since education has opened out the
widest avenues to personal advancement, even from the plough. They no
longer live by bread alone, and therefore their artificial wants have
been increasing at a greater ratio than their means of satisfying them
out of the produce of the land. Without entering here upon the important
effect of the corn supplies from America, and of the depreciation of the
value of the Norwegian timber, owing to the increased competition of
America and other countries, we may sum up this imperfect prefatory
sketch by stating that, from a general point of view, the Gamle Norge
(Old Norway) of Mr. Laing's days has for many years been passing through
a process of transformation, the latest results of which we shall now
describe.[12]
Mr. Laing's contention, that when land is held in freehold, not as a
rule in tenancy, the relative size or value of the estates into which
the land is divided will remain the same at one period as at another, is
entirely refuted by the official statistics of Norway. In the first
place, the total number of properties, which was about 111,000 in 1838,
had grown, in 1870, to 149,000 (34-1/2 per cent.), and is still higher
at the present day, with a continued tendency to multiplication by
partition. Secondly, the proportion that existed in 1838 between the
various sizes of agricultural holdings has undergone a notable change,
marking a very considerable increase in the relative number of small
plots.
As it was found practically impossible to estimate the value of landed
property on the basis of its acreage (the physical conditions of the
country giving such great variety to the value of estates), the
'Cadastre' introduced in 1836, established, for purposes of assessment,
a classification based on 'skylddaler,' or taxable, value. This unit of
taxation was assumed to represent a mean capital value of about 89l.,
arrived at by estimating the net income derived at that period from the
working of land during an average year.
The following statement exhibits the cadastral classification of
properties,[13] and the changes that have occurred in the several groups
between 1838 and 1870.
1838. 1870.
Estates below 0.2 skylddaler in value 8,866 26,048
" between 0.2 and 1 " 31,265 52,067
" " 1 " 2 " 28,652 33,427
" " 2 " 5 " 32,854 29,498
" " 5 " 10 " 7,043 6,012
" " 10 " 20 " 1,791 1,617
" above 20 " 315 344
Total 110,786 149,013
It is thus evident that, even fifteen years ago, the increase in the
total number of properties, as compared with the number in 1838, had
affected only the three groups of smaller holdings, and particularly the
group (below 0.2) which, according to Dr. Broch, 'includes the sites of
houses and cottages owned by labourers, fishermen, seamen, and artizans,
but estimated to yield an average of 5-1/2 bushels of corn, 8 bushels of
potatoes, and grass for half a cow. The holdings more purely
agricultural, and designated by the same authority as 'small
properties,' are those comprised in the two next categories, namely,
parcels of land over 0.2 and under 2 skylddaler in value. In 1870, we
find that a little more than one-half of the landed properties in Norway
and one-third of the total cadastral area, were included in those two
groups. The average yield of those small properties is estimated by Dr.
Broch at '55 bushels (20 hectol) of cereals, and 82-1/2 bushels (30
hectol) of potatoes, with fodder for four cows, seven sheep or goats,
and half a horse.' He states, nevertheless, that--
'without subsidiary means of existence, the most frugal
families cannot subsist on them, even when free from debt
and other incumbrances. There can be no question of
employing hired labour on such farms, although a domestic
servant is sometimes kept. The owners or tenants of such
small properties seek their principal means of existence in
fishing, forest work, and a variety of other occupations.'
The group of properties more particularly admired by Mr. Laing is that
which is officially classed under 'Properties of medium size,' ranging
between two and ten skylddaler in cadastral value. They represented in
1870 only 24 per cent. of the total number of properties, but 59 per
cent. of the cadastral area of Norway. These are the farms which can, on
an average, feed fifteen head of cattle, thirty or forty sheep or goats,
and a couple of pigs, and yield 30 imperial quarters of cereals, 40
imperial quarters of potatoes, and fodder for a couple of horses.
'Agriculture on these properties,' continues Dr. Broch, 'is
not only the most important means of existence, but also in
many cases the only resource. _They suffice for a family of
simple habits, provided the proprietor is not crippled with
debt, that he has not to pay too heavy "foederaa"_
(annuities, incumbrances) _and on condition that he lives as
a peasant, assisting personally in the work of the
firm_,[14]
Estates of an assessed value of more than ten 'skylddaler' are
designated as 'Large Properties.' They cover 13.4 per cent. of the total
cadastral area, but represent only 1.3 per cent. of the total number of
properties; and it is exclusively these that afford, according to Dr.
Broch, 'easy circumstances to their possessors, who are not infrequently
ship-owners, forest-owners, engaged in the fishery-trade,' &c.
It is thus manifest that, in 1878, when Dr. Broch drew up his Report for
the Universal Exhibition at Paris, the diffusion of property in Norway
had left only about 25 per cent. of the yeomen farmers (excluding the
group of 'Large Properties') capable of maintaining themselves and their
families on their freeholds on conditions which, as we shall presently
show, no longer exist, and that the great bulk of the landed proprietors
were in occupation of such small patches of land that their subsistence
was entirely dependent upon other employments. This view is very fully
borne out by the 'Reports of the Norwegian Prefects for the Quinquennial
Period 1876-80.' Their observations on the growing subdivision of land
as one of the causes by which the agricultural economy has been
disturbed, to its great disadvantage, are well worth attention.
An increasing subdivision of land is reported from the provinces of
North Bergen, Romsdal, South Trondhjem, and Tromsoe. The Prefect of North
Bergen points to it as one of the reasons of the unfavorable condition
of the province:--
'It may,' he writes, 'with just cause be said to exist when
the properties parcelled out are insufficient for the
maintenance of a family, and when the farms are situated in
a locality which does not afford the opportunity of some
kind of subsidiary employment, or if the proprietor of such
a small holding cannot attach himself to another man as a
labourer for hire. When utilised, however, by the
inhabitants of the coast, such subdivision cannot be
regarded as excessive, for the owners of the small patches
are able to obtain for themselves and their families the
necessaries of life by fishing. When, however, a landowner,
on account of the insignificant extent or the small
productiveness of his farm, finds himself unable to subsist
without seeking the wages of a labourer, his position is not
better, or but little better, than that of the cotter
(Husmand) alongside of him, notwithstanding that the latter
is not owner of the land he cultivates. It is a matter of
course that such farmers will be destitute of economical
power, and unable to give the communal or the provincial
exchequer any visible contribution towards the funds that
have to be raised in order to meet the public expenditure.
The existence of such small proprietors is not, on the
whole, desirable.'
In the province of South Trondhjem the great increase of the
indebtedness of the landowners is ascribed in part to the subdivision of
property by the creation of _Myrmoend_, literally 'bogmen'
(bog-trotters?), or men supplied gratuitously, in recent times, with
small plots of waste land, for the purpose of qualifying them as voters.
Subdivision has likewise resulted from the partition of holdings in
common, which, according to Dr. Broch, formed, in 1870, 13.4 per cent.
of all the properties in Norway; principally in the Western Provinces,
from the Naze to the Fiord of Trondhjem, where they constituted at that
period, on the average as much as 30 per cent. of the landed property.
Under a law passed in 1857, those lands are now divisible or
exchangeable, and it appears from the report of the Prefects that the
demands in that direction cannot be satisfied by the Government
officials with sufficient promptness. In the province of South
Trondhjem, for instance, about 40 per cent. of the properties were still
held in common in 1875, but between 1876 and 1880 the partition of such
lands was advancing 'at the rate of about twenty farms per annum.'
The Prefect of Romsdal enumerates the causes of an increasing
subdivision of landed property as follows: 1. The clearing of land for
fields and meadows with the view of affording support to more families
than one. 2. The desire of a proprietor to let more of his children than
the nearest _Odelsberretige_[15] come into the possession of his estate.
3. In the case of an indebted proprietor, the necessity of parting with
a portion of his land in order to get clear of his creditors; and 4. The
desire on the part of persons who have no real property to come into the
possession of land, especially tenants and cotters. The yeomen farmers
themselves, he reports:
'bring forward as a substantial reason for the increasing
subdivision of land the fact that, owing to the growing
difficulty of obtaining labourers, _it does not pay to
remain in possession of a larger estate than can be worked
by the family itself_.'
Consequently, the number of holdings was increased in that province by
nearly 10 per cent. between 1876 and 1880. A corroboration of this view
is to be found in other Reports, particularly in the Report from the
Province of North Trondhjem, in which the yeomen farmers are declared to
be compelled to 'cultivate the land with the resources of their own
households.' The effect of the conversion of cotters into small
proprietors may be estimated from the following opinion of another
Prefect: 'The burden of bad times is often felt more heavily by the
proprietor than by the cotter;' and all the Reports show that 'the
times' are as bad in Norway as they are in the United Kingdom, with this
aggravation, that 70 to 80 per cent. of the population of Norway is
settled on the land, and steeped in debt.
Most of the Prefects report unfavourably on the condition and prospects
of agriculture, and on the depressing influence of American competition
in corn, which began to make itself distinctly felt about the year
1875,[16] when also the forest industry, so intimately connected with
agriculture, first encountered the effects of a greatly increased
shipment of timber from America and other countries to Europe. But these
are not the only reasons, over and above the subdivision of property
already dwelt upon, to which they ascribe a very general decline in the
economic condition of the yeomen farmer. In one province, 'habits of
thrift and providence had been awakened and replaced by new habits of
life, with greater demands for comforts and enjoyments.' High prices
previously realized for timber had caused luxury to enter into all the
circumstances of life, stimulating in many quarters a reckless waste of
money earned.' In another, 'the demand for comforts of life has risen,
and it is not all that have found it easy to limit the satisfaction of
their wants,' and 'more has been consumed than means allowed.' The
female part, more particularly, of the population of North Bergen, is
reproached with an inability to withstand the temptation of buying the
wares of all kinds, 'neither useful nor necessary,' which the present
great number of country storekeepers insidiously placed before their
eyes. 'The improved mode of living introduced during a previous,
flourishing period, has also contributed to ruin the economic condition
of the people, who in the harder times that have succeeded have not
known how to cut their coats according to their cloth.' At the same
time, the Prefect adds, 'the mode of living, taking the rural population
as a whole, is very frugal; yes, far too frugal. It is very desirable
that they should have more substantial food than they have at present,
but they must first have the means to obtain it.' Even so far north as
the Provinces of Nordland and Tromsoe, a similar tendency to live beyond
means, the absence of good economy, and the dissipation of money 'on no
particular system,' are reported to be the present characteristics of
the people who are largely engaged in the fisheries.
No one who has travelled in Norway can fail to endorse the assertion,
that the fare of the yeomen farmer, however many may be his cows, is of
a character which no English agricultural labourer would be satisfied
with. Oatmeal cakes, potatoes, porridge, butter and milk, and of late
years American pork (when within reach of the yeoman's means) are the
principal articles of food; and the hardiest traveller, whether native
or alien, would not venture to leave the main arteries of communication
without making his own provision of potted meats, or trusting for his
sustenance to the fish and game to be killed by himself. Mr. Laing's
'salted meat and black-puddings' are certainly not to be found, except
at farms that are few and far between. On the high roads, where
tourists' gold circulates, the traveller suffers no deprivation, and the
houses and stations are so comfortable and well-appointed, that only the
most exacting foreigner can find fault with the accommodation provided.
Mr. Laing's observations in this respect apply at present only to
establishments of this kind, and to the very few farms at which the
servants are still 'called to and from their work by means of a bell.'
Except, therefore, along the course of the tourists' gold stream, and in
the vicinity of towns, the mode of living is rude in the extreme, and
the lament of the Prefect of North Bergen is in reality applicable to
the great bulk of the yeomen farmers of Norway, as well as to their
tenants and cotters. Nor is there any trace of that equality in the mode
of living which Mr. Laing found in existence among the several classes
of the rural population--'the public functionary, the clergyman, the
gentleman of larger property, and the _Bonde_ or peasant.' Refinement
and culture, equal to what exists amongst corresponding classes of this
country, are wanting only to the yeomen farmers; and their efforts to
adopt a 'higher standard of living,' and to acquire the 'comforts of
life,' have in no small degree conduced to the encumbrance of their
estates. From the Reports of the Prefects it is evident that the gravest
symptom of the decline of the rural economy in Norway, and, at the same
time, one of its principle causes, is the heavy indebtedness of the
yeomen farmers, great and small. Its origin is traceable to the year
1816, when the Bank of Norway was founded, chiefly for the purpose of
'advancing on its own notes, upon first securities over land, any sum
not exceeding two-thirds of the value of the property' mortgaged to it.
Mr. Laing alludes to it as 'the peculiar, and for the wants of the
country, well-imagined, Bank of Norway,' which 'facilitates greatly the
family arrangements with regard to land.' Its capital was originally
raised by a forced loan or tax upon all landed property, and the
landholders became shareholders according to the amount of their
respective shares. The borrower repaid half-yearly to the Bank the
interest of the sum that might be to his debit at the rate of 4 per
cent. per annum, and was also bound to pay off 5 per cent. yearly of the
principal, which was thus liquidated in twenty years. Although Mr. Laing
was of opinion that 'a circulation of paper money on such a basis is
evidently next, in point of security, to that of the precious metals,'
he fails to mention that the Bank was forced to suspend specie payments
three years after its establishment, and that the resumption of those
payments was not commenced until 1823, when the notes of the Bank began
to be convertible at little over half their original value; the
operation of raising them to par, on a graduated scale, having been
completed only in 1842, a period since which the Bank, with an increased
Reserve Fund, has maintained an uninterrupted and unimpeachable
stability. But while the Bank still advances money on the security of
landed property, two-thirds of its resources are now employed in the
discount of mercantile bills. At the end of 1883, its loans to the
landed proprietors amounted only to 626,000l.
In 1852, however, the State had come again to the assistance of the
landowners for the extinction of private mortgages and the consolidation
of old debts by the creation of a special 'State Mortgage Bank,' with an
original capital of 291,000l., increased by successive issues of bonds
representing advances on the security of real property, bearing interest
at the rate of 4 per cent, (at present 4-1/2 per cent.), and repayable
by drawings over a period of thirty years. The amount of the bonds
issued up to 1884 was about 3,812,000l., and in 1878 about
three-quarters of the bonds were held in the country itself, their
market value being still almost at par.
It is principally into this Bank that the yeomen farmers have been
dipping their estates at a rapidly increasing rate. Thus, while the
loans on the security of real property in rural districts averaged
57,500l. per annum between 1853 and 1855, and 220,600l. between 1876 and
1880, the advances made in 1883 amounted to 396,500l. At the end of that
year the balance of outstanding loans had reached the sum of
3,752,000l., of which about 77 per cent., or 2,889,000l., represented
advances in rural districts, the remaining 23 per cent, having been
borrowed in towns. The interest payable on those loans is respectively
4-1/4 and 4-3/4 per cent., according to whether the borrowers have been
supplied with bonds bearing interest at the rate of 4 or 4-1/2 per cent.
per annum; and 3 per cent. of the capital is repayable per annum until
the extinction of the debt over a period of thirty years.
There is a third public source available to the landed proprietors for
loans on mortgages and on bonds or bills, namely the Savings Banks. In
1884, the savings-banks, in rural districts alone, held in 'mortgage
bonds' and in 'bonds and bills' a sum of about 3,553,000l.; but in what
proportion that debt was incurred by local traders and by farmers, it is
impossible to say. It is, however, clear that the yeomen farmers have
benefited largely by the deposits made in those banks by the
comparatively few who have been able to accumulate, instead of
borrowing, money. Thus, the Prefect of Hedemarken reports that, 'while
large amounts, realized by the sale of timber, were deposited in the
savings-banks, extensive loans were made by those establishments to
persons in less favourable circumstances,' and that 'the savings-banks,
to be found in so many parishes, have, by the easy access they afford to
loans, beguiled many into a needless borrowing of money, subsequently
squandered.'
Over and above these facilities for borrowing money from public
institutions, the yeomen farmers are undoubtedly heavily in debt to
local storekeepers, and to merchants and traders in the towns. In fact
the great bulk of the landed proprietors have been borrowing in every
direction as much as they could raise by mortgage or by bill. Owing to
the excellent system of registration that exists in Norway, there is no
difficulty in ascertaining the extent to which the charges on real
property in rural districts have increased between the years 1876 and
1880. It appears from the Reports of the Prefects that, between those
dates, the balance of mortgages newly effected over those extinguished
in rural districts amounted to a sum of about four millions sterling.
The State Mortgage Bank is bound not to advance more than six-tenths of
the value of land and buildings (forests excepted), and it is supposed
that the loans have so far not exceeded four-tenths of the value of
mortgaged property; but as the yeomen farmers generally contrive to
borrow on second mortgages, it may safely be assumed, that their estates
are charged with interest at 4-1/4 to 6 per cent. on a considerable part
of the nominal value of what is not purely forest land, in addition to
an annual repayment of 3 per cent. of the capital borrowed from the
State Mortgage Bank. The forests, on the other hand, have been largely
used up in paying the interest and capital on those loans, either by
cutting them down, or by leasing or pawning them to traders, or to
yeomen who have been able to keep their heads above water and to profit
by the economic distress of the great majority of their
fellow-landowners. The difficulty experienced by that majority in
meeting the payment of interest and capital, especially at a time when
the value of agricultural produce has been considerably diminished by
American competition, and when also the competition of American and
Baltic timber has simultaneously reduced the profits of the forest
industry to a point that hardly repays the felling of trees, is clearly
shown from the statistics of forced sales, of auctions and of distraints
in the rural districts, and from an accompanying increase in the number
of lawsuits before Courts of First Instance. It appears from the
Reports of the Prefects that the sales of real property for debt have
increased in every Province between the two periods 1871-1875 and
1876-1880 to an extent that ranges from 30 per cent. to 600 per cent.,
the greatest increase having taken place in the Provinces of
Kristiansamt (600 per cent.), Norland, Nedenaes, Buskerud, Hedemarken and
Akershus, where it ranged between 600 per cent. and 146 per cent. From
another official source we obtain the following statement:--
1876-1880.
Number. Amount.
1. Compulsory sales
of real property
in rural districts. 2513 563,000l. averaging 224l. per sale.
2. Do. of personal
property. 5136 134,000l. ditto 26l. per sale.
3. Distraints for arrears
of taxes, &c. -- 1,089,000l.
But since real property is of comparatively low value in Norway, and
personal property limited mostly to the veriest necessities of life, it
is not so much the total of the amounts realized by forced sales, or the
sums for which 'executions' and 'distraints' were effected, that give
the measure of the depressed condition of the yeomen farmers, as the
great and steady increase that took place between 1876 and 1880 in the
number of those operations. Thus, while the number of forced sales of
real property in towns, as well as in rural districts, was 424 in 1876,
it had grown to 1378 in 1880. It is therefore not surprising to find in
the Reports of the Prefects from which we have so largely drawn our
figures that 'the means of meeting liabilities and of paying taxes at
the proper time have grown more feeble, and recourse to legal
enforcement of pecuniary claims has consequently become more frequent.'
'The condition of this Province' (Kristiansamt) 'is all the worse from a
pretty widespread misuse of credit during the previous period'
(1871-75). In another province (N. Bergen) we find that the depression
in 1879 and 1880 'compelled those who had claims to enforce them
rigorously. Mortgages, distraints, sales, &c., have therefore increased,
and there has been an exceptionally, large number of suits before the
Courts of Mutual Agreement. 'The value of agricultural produce has
fallen, owing to a great extent to a scarcity of money and to great
competition from a desire to convert as much produce as possible into
money.' In the northern province of Tromsoe 'merchants have suffered from
the impoverishment of their customers' (mostly fishermen as well as
landowners), 'and have caused them to be made bankrupts. Credit has
been misused on a large scale. Its facility induces the population to
live beyond its means. It also encourages traders to set up in business
and get customers with ease, without having capital or means of their
own. The one misuse reacts on the other. All products are sunk
considerably in value, and this fall is even greater in the case of real
estate.'
The latter statement is not generally applicable to the remaining
provinces, for we find that while the average value of the 'skylddaler,'
or unit of assessment, was 153l.,[17] according to prices paid for land
in 1871-1875, it has risen to about 180l. in 1876-1880, thus confuting
Mr. Laing's theory, that the peculiar succession of property would tend
to keep land at a low value. It would not, however, be right to conclude
from these figures that landed property has, on the whole, increased of
late years in value, despite the general indebtedness of its owners.
Land in the vicinity of towns and railways must naturally become more
and more valuable, and the relatively much higher prices paid for such
land have no doubt had the effect of raising the total average deduced
from sales of every description of landed property. It may also be
assumed that the demand for land is artificially increased by the
facility with which it may be purchased, since at least one-half of the
purchase money generally remains on mortgage, in addition to other
encumbrances. At the same time, the financial institutions, to which so
large a proportion of the real property in Norway is mortgaged, are
interested in maintaining its value, and attain their object by
abstaining from offering at any one period too many defaulting
properties for sale; and it may also be suspected that the statistics of
forced sales represent only cases in which no compromise could be
effected, or in which it was expedient or possible to have recourse to
the ultimate means of recovery without sensibly deteriorating locally
the value of landed property. Cases are, in fact, not infrequent in
which the mortgagees find themselves compelled to retain the property of
the defaulter, and either to place it in the hands of caretakers, with
the hope of future realization on more favourable terms, or to sell it
in small lots as opportunity occurs. In any case, the full and exact
effect of the pawning of all the landed property of the country at a
time when its agriculture has to compete with American cereals, its
timber industry with supplies from America and the Baltic, and its
wooden ships with iron steamers transporting cargoes at an almost
nominal freight, is not yet to be found in statistical records.
The indisputable fact remains that, notwithstanding the existence of a
system of land tenure which, according to Mr. Laing, was so perfect
between 1834 and 1836 as to render its adoption in this country, and
especially in Ireland, highly desirable, the yeomen farmers of
Norway--framers of their own laws and absolute masters of their own
destinies--are not only at present suffering from the commercial and
agricultural depression that obtains in other countries of Europe, in
which the social state is more or less differently constituted, but also
find themselves, in face of that depression, with exceptionally heavy
burdens on their backs in the form of pecuniary indebtedness at a rate
of interest which mere agriculture, under the most favourable
circumstances, cannot possibly afford to pay.
This heavy indebtedness has not, as a rule, been incurred for productive
purposes, such as drainage, improved methods of agriculture, the
increase of stock, &c.; and although the use of simple agricultural
machinery is somewhat on the increase in Norway, yet agriculture remains
very much in the same primitive condition in which it was found by Mr.
Laing.[18] The Prefects attribute this backwardness to want of skill on
the part of the proprietors (Romsdal), to the poverty of the soil, to
the dearness of agricultural labour, and generally to the unremunerative
results of husbandry since the depreciation of the value of its
products. In a letter addressed last year to the 'Morgenblad,' the
leading Journal at Christiania, by a native authority on the subject of
agriculture, it is urged that the landed proprietors of Norway have 'for
some years past been going down hill;' the hopes of improving the
condition of agriculture, entertained about thirty years ago, when
efforts were first commenced in that direction, being now entirely
dissipated.
'It is painful,' he says 'to see how the forests are
decreasing and how land once under cultivation is lying
unused. When asked the reason, the proprietors reply that
the prices of corn and other agricultural products are so
low and the wages of labour so high, owing to emigration,
that they have not the means to cultivate a large portion of
the land, and could derive no advantage from it even if the
means were available.'
The yeomen farmers, being therefore in a distressed condition, and
their children and best hands forced to leave their homes in order to
cultivate the fruitful soil of America, to the growing detriment of
those who remain to till the soil of Norway--those farmers, he points
out with great force of argument, must have the same protection which is
accorded to the industrial classes, if agriculture is to be saved from
final ruin. In fact, this remarkable letter points to an agitation in
favour of the imposition of a 'fiscal duty,'[19] on corn, food of all
kind, cattle, dairy produce, &c.; and supports this conclusion with the
argument used by Prince Bismarck on the second reading of his recent
Corn Duties Bill:
'The trade of the Baltic will suffer nothing from protective
duties. As regards agriculture, I am opposed to all
legislation against the subdivision of land ... but if you
want to have small occupiers of land, you must vote for
duties on corn.'
Account must at the same time be taken of the heavy and increasing
charges that fall on landed property for the administration of rural
districts in Norway. While the inhabitants of the rural communities
contribute towards the support of the Central Administration only in the
form of Customs and Excise duties, stamps, succession duties, and
contributions towards the construction of highways, the burthen of local
administration, justice, police, prisons, the Church, public
instruction, poor relief, sanitary service, parochial roads, posting
stations, interest on communal loans, &c., falls on their landed
property. This self-assessed and self-imposed burthen has naturally been
growing more heavy, from year to year, under the exigencies of modern
progress. Thus, while the total communal expenditure in 1853 was
167,000l., it had risen to 497,000l. in 1880, or 197-1/2 per cent. About
one half of the requisite resources is derived from a tax on the
cadastral value of real property; the remaining half is raised by a tax
on capital and income. In 1880 the communal impositions on land
represented a taxation of about 6s. 7d. per head of the rural
population. That the whole of the communal expenditure is not covered by
taxation is apparent from the fact, that in the same year the rural
districts had increased the amount of their total debts to about half a
million sterling, from 312,000l. in 1874.
In this respect it is certainly significant to discover that Poor
Relief, organized by a law passed in 1863, is the largest item of
communal expenditure, being indeed very little less than half of the
total annual liabilities of the rural districts, in a country in which,
in the halcyon days of Mr. Laing, only the infirm were supported for a
few days at a time by the yeomen farmers. He appears to have attributed
this to the absence of collieries, the introduction of coal as fuel
having, he argues, been coeval in England with the imposition of a rate
for the poor, deprived by that industry of the work of chopping up
firewood which gave so much employment to idle hands in Norway. However
that might be, in 1880 and 1881 the number of persons in receipt of
relief or maintained in hospital, at the charge of rural communities
alone, was respectively 109,688 and about 114,000, or in both years a
little over 7 per cent. of the total rural population. Inclusive of
urban districts the same totals amounted in those years to 81 and 83 per
1000, or above 8 per cent. of the population of the kingdom, the cost of
support having been about 3s. 10d. per head of the entire population,
which contributed 2s. 9d. per head in special taxation for that object,
and the balance in an indirect manner, apparently by housing paupers,
&c.
These paupers include cotters and labourers, as well as the ruined among
the smaller yeomen. Farmers who had previously been able to employ
labour, 'no longer find their advantage in it,' and consequently--
'even able-bodied workmen (in Hedemarken) were compelled to
seek relief from the Poor Fund when their families were
large. The smaller farmers and the labourers are in the
worst plight, since the falling off in the timber trade has
made them feel the want of the usual steady demand for
labour at high wages.' Further: 'it has become very
difficult for the least affluent and for labourers to gain a
livelihood in the prevailing money and timber crisis.... The
depression must for a long time be felt by many.
We need only point out that, in the United Kingdom, the percentage of
persons in receipt of relief during the year 1881 was 3 per cent. in
England and Wales, 2.6 per cent. in Scotland, and 11 per cent. in
Ireland,[20] involving an expenditure at the rate respectively of 6s.
3d., 4s. 6d., and 3s. 9d. per head of population.
Obviously, the relatively greater cost of relieving the poor in Great
Britain is due to the more expensive character of the support afforded,
and to the very heavy sums paid for salaries and other establishment
charges; but it is unquestionably a damaging fact against the system of
land tenure in Norway, that the pauperism by which it is in the present
day accompanied, with a strong tendency to increase, is equalled only by
the state of things in Ireland, which certain legislators now desire to
remedy by the creation of peasant proprietors.
The relative state of matters in Great Britain and in Norway has
therefore greatly changed since Mr. Laing wrote:
'The distribution of the wealth and employment of a country
has much more to do, than the amount, with the well-being
and condition of the people. The wealth and employment of
the British nation far exceed those of any other nation; yet
in no country is so large a proportion of the inhabitants
sunk in pauperism and wretchedness.'
An increasing rate of pauperism is one of the symptoms of agricultural
distress in Norway, but the strong tide of emigration from rural and
urban districts marks with equal force the depression and congestion
from which the country is suffering in the same degree as the United
Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Aided by improved and cheapened
means of transport, the number of emigrants from Norway ranged between
20,212 in 1880 and 22,167 in 1883, giving an average of 1.3 to 1.5 per
cent. of the total population, the contingent of the rural districts
being about 70 per cent. of the total number. As in the case of
pauperism, the corresponding rate of emigration from Ireland, namely 1.5
per cent., exhibits a remarkable similarity, and affords another
convincing proof that peasant proprietorship is no _panacea_ for rustic
indigence.
Those who have not studied the present economic condition of the yeoman
farmer and agricultural labourer in Norway, or who have not taken into
consideration the change that has come over the entire country, and the
ambition, as distinguished from previous apathy, which education and
communication with an outer world, no longer closed to them, has
awakened among the classes with which we are dealing, are inclined to
attribute a good part of this emigrating tendency to the influence and
the material assistance of those who have gone before. Indisputably, the
Norwegian emigrant, by his persevering labour and steady conduct, rarely
fails to succeed in Wisconsin and other States, in which he is always a
welcome settler; and consequently he soon finds himself able to transmit
money for the purpose of enabling his brothers and sisters, and not
seldom his father and mother, to join him. No State or other aid is
afforded for such purposes to Norwegians, although it is occasionally
the case, that the hard cash with which the emigrant leaves his home is
derived from the proceeds of a loan raised by the head of his family for
the purpose of buying out co-heirs under the _Odels ret_, adding
thereby, as we have already shown, to the indebtedness with which the
land is burdened. Others, also, maintain that many young men emigrate
from Norway in order to avoid military conscription, which, although
milder there in its demands than in most other European countries where
that system exists, undoubtedly diminishes the quantity and deteriorates
the quality of agricultural labour. The strongest incentive to
emigration, however, is the desire to escape from the misery and penury
which accompany in Norway, as in every other part of Europe, the
condition of a small landowner, cotter, or labourer who is unable to
find regular employment on adjoining estates that can be kept going, if
nothing more, with the aid of scientific knowledge, machinery and
capital.
There is, however, yet another proof of the prevalent material _malaise_
in Norway, particularly among its rural classes, and strangely enough it
bears the same character as that which has brought the 'three acres and
a cow' and Irish land bills, past and expected, into such prominent
relief in our country of lack-lands, namely political agitation.
Whatever may be its merits or demerits on this side of the North Sea,
our readers will scarcely be prepared to learn that a corresponding
ferment has been engendered of late years on the opposite shores. We are
told this by the Prefect of South Trondhjem, one of the most important
provinces of a country where, in the days of Mr. Laing, there was a
dead-level of contentment, where the widest form of home-rule has been
in operation since the early part of the present century, and where the
Crown Administration has all that time been more pure, blameless and
efficient than in any other country on the Continent of Europe. His
significant words are:
'As everywhere else in Norway, particularly in rural
districts, politicians (_i. e. agitators_) are here taking
more and more hold over the minds of the people. Political
unrest increases, and immature and extreme opinions are
being advanced more than is desirable. The quiet, temperate,
but progressive development to which Norway had previously
been accustomed, and with which the great bulk of the nation
had been well content, is in danger of being replaced by a
progress in fits and starts, accompanied by leaps in the
dark.'
No less painful and suggestive is it to find, in the Report from the
Prefect of Hedemarken, that 'the Christian earnestness of the people has
suffered under the influence of the many misleading writings and
tendencies which have in recent times found their way into every stratum
of society.' As at home, so in Norway, the question of Church
Disestablishment, with all its consequences, is approaching within
measurable distance of practical solution.[21]
Supported by official publications, we have now described the present
condition of the yeomen farmers of Norway, and from the facts and
figures we have marshalled, the following replies may confidently be
given to the Socialistic theories and conclusions of Mr. Laing:
1. Notwithstanding, or rather in part owing to, the existence of the
Allodial Right [which has proved in its results to be an exaggerated
form of primogeniture involving a greater multiplication of encumbrances
even than exists under the system of land tenure in the United Kingdom],
an excessive subdivision of the land has occurred and is still
proceeding in Norway, to the prejudice of estates which in 1836, and
even later, afforded moderate ease and contentment to their owners, and
relatively well remunerated labour to the workman and the cotter.
2. The dead-level of comfortable subsistence, attributed by Mr. Laing to
the parcelling-out of land into small estates, has been converted, by
the influence of irresistible economic laws, into one of general
distress and discontent among the rural classes.
3. The rates of pauperism and emigration prove that the agrarian
population has not, as prophesied by Mr. Laing, kept 'within the bounds
of possible modern existence.'
4. The taxation of landed property, for local purposes, has greatly
increased, particularly under the head of Poor Relief; and
5. The distressed condition of the yeoman farmer in Norway is strongly
attested by his heavy and growing indebtedness. He may now, in fact, be
classed with the proverbially derided Fife laird, owning 'A wee bit of
land, a great lump of debt, and a dookit.'[22]
Such being the result of our enquiries into the economic condition of
the great bulk of the yeoman farmers of Norway, the ideal fabric reared
by Mr. Laing at a time when the Norse old world was still asleep, falls
utterly to the ground, and there remains but one of his statements that
we can with any advantage submit to the earnest attention of our
readers, namely, that '_A single fact brought home from such a country
is worth a volume of speculations._' We go further and say, that facts
in relation to the question of land tenure collected in any other part
of Europe are of equally inestimable value; and they have already been
supplied in great abundance from Belgium, France, Germany, Italy and
Switzerland.[23] Nothing can truly be more fatal to the successful
solution of such intricate problems than the relief of the agricultural
distress of England and Scotland, or the satisfaction of the alleged
earth-hunger of the Celtic population of Ireland, than to initiate
legislation on the hypothesis that circumstances alter cases, and that
our own country can with impunity be withdrawn from the operation of
economic laws that have asserted their supremacy throughout the entire
Continent of Europe.
As history repeats itself, so are the laws of civilized development both
general and inexorable. Even in the extreme case of Russia, it has been
proved, in an article we published a few years ago,[24] that a heavy and
ruinous price has been paid for the emancipation of the serfs on a
Socialistic and partly Communistic basis, and on the erroneous
assumption, that the continued existence of the 'Mir' (the ancient
village community even of India) was an institution indigenous to the
country itself, and therefore worthy of being perpetuated by
legislation. Millions of a rural population, freed from personal
servitude, were chained anew to the land by the indebtedness incurred in
the expropriation of the lords of the soil. The allotments, averaging
ten acres, parcelled out among them in 1861, were estimated to be
sufficiently large and productive to provide not only for their support,
but also, firstly, for the payment of the 'redemption dues' with which
the allotted lands were charged for a limited period of years at an
average rate of only 1s. 9d. per acre, and secondly, for the punctual
payment of the moderate poll-tax, which the exigencies of the State
required them to contribute. Those expectations began to vanish soon
after they had been formed, and at the present time we see the
previously rich agricultural plains of Russia, abandoned, as they almost
wholly are, to the slovenly husbandry of a rude and greatly demoralized
peasantry, deteriorating from year to year in the quality of their
produce, and thereby opposing less and less impediment to the successful
competition of other corn-growing countries.[25] The great fall that has
taken place in the value of Russian cereals is apparent from the fact
that, notwithstanding the depreciation of the paper currency of the
country to the extent of about 25 per cent. since the serfs were
emancipated (and nearly 37 per cent. from the par value of the standard
rouble), the corn-grower in Russia actually receives for his produce, in
paper money, some 40 per cent, less than he obtained for it when the
currency was less debased.
Despair, and the absence of that restraint which education, and the
moral elevation inseparable from it, are establishing in other European
countries, have driven the rural inhabitants of entire districts, and
even provinces, into habits of drunkenness stronger and more general
than those which existed before the autocratic creation of 'peasant
proprietors' in Russia.
Among the earliest measures adopted in Russia during the present reign
was that of a reduction and partial remission of the 'redemption dues,'
which, on the 1st of January, 1885, represented the interest and sinking
fund on nearly 113 millions sterling,[26] expended by the Government in
the partial expropriation of the now ruined landlords of the
country.[27]
During the year 1884, alone, those reductions and remissions inflicted a
loss of 1,135,000l.[28] on the Imperial Treasury. The most recent
measure of alleviation has been the total abolition of the poll-tax[29]
(to be completed by the end of the present year); and, consequently, the
State-contribution of at least 85 per cent. of the population of Russia
is being limited to the excise duty on drink, an item of revenue with
which the Imperial Government cannot possibly dispense, since it brings
in a sum more than adequate for the maintenance of the imposing military
forces of the Empire.
Simultaneously, 'Peasant Land Banks' have been established by the State
in order to facilitate the purchase of still more land by the ex-serfs.
The Minister of Finance was authorized in 1882 to issue annually for
that purpose a sum of 500,000l. in bonds, bearing 5-1/2 per cent.
interest. But, by the 1st of January, 1886, these banks had already
advanced over three millions sterling to 785 Communes, 1576
'partnerships,' and 359 individual peasants, representing an aggregate
number of 112,765 householders. On loans for 24-1/2 years the interest
and sinking fund, payable by the borrowers, amount to 8-1/2 per cent.,
and on those for 34-1/2 years, to 7-1/2 per cent., the lands purchased
by such means remaining inalienable until the extinction of the
mortgages, except with the consent of the mortgagees, _i. e._ the banks.
The effects of this new departure in the direction of providing small
landed proprietors with State funds, will no doubt soon be apparent.
Whether, therefore, we examine the experience of a civilized, orderly,
home-ruled country like Norway, with a steady, laborious, and, we may
almost say, abstemious, population in many respects akin to our own, or
that of a State still at an immensely distant stage of social
development,--and under a very different form of Government,--the
salient results of bolstering up, by means of State loans, or of
artificially creating, equally at the cost of the State, a numerous body
of small landed proprietors, have been strikingly identical in regard to
the ultimate economic condition of the agrarian classes.
Insisting, as we do, on the strength of the facts we have adduced, that,
in old Europe, the operation of economic laws affecting land tenure,
admits of no exceptions or extenuating circumstances in favour of their
violation, it appears impossible, without presumptuous sophistry or
political dishonesty, to resist the conclusion, that the infringement of
those laws in any part of the United Kingdom could only terminate,
infallibly and speedily, in damage to the State, after ruin to the
individual.