The abolition of the Statute of Uses by Lord Birkenhead will be
an accomplished fact on the 1st January, 1926. Copyhold and other
picturesque tenures of the middle ages are to be abolished, the law of
real property is to be assimilated to the law of personal property,
women are to be put on an equality with men as regards the laws of
descent, and primogeniture is to be abolished. This is all, no doubt,
very sensible, but also depressing for anyone who likes to feel a
certain sense of continuity with the past. It also precipitates the
coming conflict between the Collectivist confiscation of land and the
ideal of small or peasant proprietorship. The land laws of the future
will, of course, depend on which party gains the day.
The consistent hostility of all ministries to agriculture is due to the
fact that Free Trade is now one of the regular ruts of British finance,
and even the peasant proprietor of France or Denmark would not flourish
without a certain amount of consideration from the State. Should the
voters of Great Britain swallow all the nonsense preached by the
followers of Henry George and Lloyd George in regard to land monopoly,
the ruin of agricultural prosperity and of the lovely landscapes of
Great Britain may confidently be anticipated; but should the wide
distribution of land among smallholders continue under the _ægis_ of
public favour, we may see the legal encouragement of freehold tenure
on Canadian or American lines and even of the tenant being able to buy
out his landlord on fair terms. It is curious that New Zealand, which
adopted State Socialism on a large scale in the nineties, is now mainly
governed by individualistic business men and land-owning farmers.
The big landlords play into the hands of Collectivists by allowing
their agents to do as they like. I, for instance, twenty years ago
bought a long lease of a house in St. John’s Wood, which will expire
just when I do not want to leave my happy home. I have a delightful
garden shaded by poplars and beeches which will probably be covered
one day by a block of untenanted flats. I want if possible to secure
my position and am quite ready to pay any fair price for the freehold
or for an extension of the lease. The Eyre Estate (my landlord) will
not even condescend to answer a letter of inquiry, and my experience
is by no means unique. No one is more disposed to be friendly with big
landlords than I am, for some of them are profitable clients; but my
own experience of the Eyre Estate impels me and many others to welcome
any law which will make the tenant less of a worm in the eyes of his
landlord.
The old system of entail and strict settlement will presumably
continue for some years with the aid of money derived from industrial
magnates and American heiresses. The conveyancers of Lincoln’s Inn
may be trusted to preserve institutions in defiance of legislation
just as they abolished, for all practical purposes, the right of dower
in the eighteenth century. The principal question is whether there
will be sufficient money or inclination to support the old system in
order to prevent places like Chatsworth and Warwick Castle from being
converted into public schools or lunatic asylums. If there is, then the
lawyers will be equal to the occasion, and already many big estates are
preserved from destruction by being turned into limited or (preferably)
unlimited companies.
Legal change depends on financial upheavals and human desires. The
desire to found a family and to buy a big estate is deeply ingrained
in Great Britain. The old aristocracy may go and a new aristocracy may
arise. But it may well be doubted if any new race of landowners will,
under the new conditions of being mulcted at every turn during life
and after death, be able to do for the countryside what the old type
of Squire did for his tenants――especially in times of agricultural
depression――or show anything like the same personal interest in the
cultivation of the land.
The best development which is at all likely to occur is the growth
of an agricultural system on Danish lines, and this would certainly
simplify the land laws.