The 55th William I. secured to freemen the inheritance of their lands,
and they were not able to sell them until the act QUIA EMPTORES
of Edward I. was passed. The tendency of persons to spend the
representative value of their lands and sell them was checked by the
Mosaic law, which did not allow any man to despoil his children of their
inheritance. The possessor could only mortgage them until the year of
jubilee--the fiftieth year. In Switzerland and Belgium, where the nobles
did not entirely get rid of the FREEMEN, the lands continued to be held
in small estates. In Switzerland there are seventy-four proprietors for
every hundred families, and in Belgium the average size of the estate is
three and a half hectares--about eight acres. These small ownerships are
not detrimental to the state. On the contrary, they tend to its security
and well-being. I have treated on this subject in my work, "The Food
Supplies of Western Europe." These small estates existed in England at
the Norman Conquest, and their perpetual continuance was the object of
the law of William I., to which I have referred. Their disappearance was
due to the greed of the nobles during the reign of the Plantagenets,
and they were not replaced by the Tudors, who neglected to restore the
men-at-arms to the position they occupied under the laws of Edward the
Confessor and William I.
The establishment of two estates in land; one the ownership, the
other the use, may be traced to the payment of rent, to the Roman
commonwealth, for the AGER PUBLICUS. Under the feudal system the rent
was of two classes--personal service or money; the latter was considered
base tenure. The legislation of the Tudors abolished the payment of rent
by personal service, and made all rent payable in money or in kind. The
land had been burdened with the sole support of the army. It was then
freed from this charge, and a tax was levied upon the community. Some
writers have sought to define RENT as the difference between fertile
lands and those that are so unproductive as barely to pay the cost of
tillage. This far-fetched idea is contradicted by the circumstance
that for centuries rent was paid by labor--the personal service of the
vassal--and it is now part of the annual produce of the soil inasmuch as
land will be unproductive without seed and labor, or being pastured by
tame animals, the representative of labor in taming and tending them.
Rent is usually the labor or the fruits of the labor of the occupant.
In some cases it is income derived from the labors of others. A broad
distinction exists between the rent of land, which is a portion of the
fruits or its equivalent in money, and that of improvements and houses,
which is an exchange of the labor of the occupant given as payment for
that employed in effecting improvements or erecting houses. The latter
described as messuages were valued in 1794 at SIX MILLIONS per annum; in
1814 they were nearly FIFETEEN MILLIONS; now they are valued at EIGHTY
MILLIONS.
[Footnote--A Parliamentary return gives the following information
as to the value of lands and messuages in 1814 and 1874:
1814-15. 1873-74.
Lands, L34,330,463 L49,906,866
Messuages, 14,895,130 80,726,502
The increase in the value of land is hardly equal to the
reduction in the value of gold, while the increase in
messuages shows the enormous expenditure of labor.]
The increase represents a sum considerably more than double the national
debt of Great Britain, and under the system of leases the improvements
will pass from the industrial to the landlord class.
It seems to me to be a mistake in legislation to encourage a system by
which these two funds merge into one, and that hands the income arising
from the expenditure of the working classes over to the tenants-in-fee
without an equivalent. This proceeds from a straining of the maxim that
"what is attached to the freehold belongs to the freehold," and was made
law when both Houses of Parliament were essentially landlord. That maxim
is only partially true: corn is as much attached to the freehold as
a tree; yet one is cut without hindrance and the other is prevented.
Potatoes, turnips, and such tubers, are only obtained by disturbing
the freehold. This maxim was at one time so strained that it applied to
fixtures, but recent legislation and modern discussions have limited the
rights of the landlord class and been favorable to the occupier, and I
look forward to such alterations in our laws as will secure to the man
who expends his labor or earnings in improvements, an estate IN PERPETUO
therein, as I think no length of user of that which is a man's own--his
labor or earnings--should hand over his representative improvements to
any other person. I agree with those writers who maintain that it is
prejudicial to the state that the rent fund should be enjoyed by
a comparatively small number of persons, and think it would
be advantageous to distribute it, by increasing the number of
tenants-in-fee. Natural laws forbid middlemen, who do nothing to make
the land productive, and yet subsist upon the labor of the farmer, and
receive as rent part of the produce of his toil. The land belongs to the
state, and should only be subject to taxes, either by personal service,
such as serving in the militia or yeomanry, or by money payments to the
state.
Land does not represent CAPITAL, but the improvements upon it do. A man
does not purchase land. He buys the right of possession. In any transfer
of land there is no locking up of capital, because one man receives
exactly the amount the other expends. The individual may lock up
his funds, but the nation does not. Capital is not money. I quote a
definition from a previous work of mine, "The Case of Ireland," p. 176:
"Capital stock properly signifies the means of subsistence for man, and
for the animals subservient to his use while engaged in the process of
production. The jurisconsults of former times expressed the idea by the
words RES FUNGIBILES, by which they meant consumable commodities, or
those things which are consumed in their use for the supply of man's
animal wants, as contradistinguished from unconsumable commodities,
which latter writers, by an extension of the term, in a figurative
sense, have called FIXED capital."
All the money in the Bank of England will not make a single four-pound
loaf. Capital, as represented by consumable commodities, is the product
of labor applied to land, or the natural fruits of the land itself. The
land does not become either more or less productive by reason of the
transfer from one person to another; it is the withdrawal of labor that
affects its productiveness.
WAGES are a portion of the value of the products of a joint combination
of employer and employed. The former advances from time to time as wages
to the latter, the estimated portion of the increase arising from their
combined operations to which he may be entitled. This may be either in
food or in money. The food of the world for one year is the yield at
harvest; it is the CAPITAL STOCK upon which mankind exist while engaged
in the operations for producing food, clothing, and other requisites
for the use of mankind, until nature again replenishes this store. Money
cannot produce food; it is useful in measuring the distribution of that
which already exists.
The grants of the Crown were a fee or reward for service rendered; the
donee became tenant-in-fee; being a reward, it was restricted to a man
and his heirs-male or his heirs-general; in default of heirs-male or
heirs-general, the land reverted to the Crown, which was the donor.
A sale to third parties does not affect this phase of the question,
inasmuch as it is a principle of British law that no man can convey to
another a greater estate in land than that which he possesses himself;
and if the seller only held the land as tenant-in-fee for HIS OWN LIFE
and that of HIS heirs, he could not give a purchaser that which belonged
to the Crown, the REVERSION on default of heirs (see Statute DE DONIS,
13 Edward I., ANTE, p. 21). This right of the sovereign, or rather
of the people, has not been asserted to the full extent. Many noble
families have become extinct, yet the lands have not been claimed, as
they should have been, for the nation.
I should not complete my review of the subject without referring to what
are called the LAWS OF PRIMOGENITURE. I fail to discover any such law.
On the contrary, I find that the descent of most of the land of England
is under the law of contract--by deed or bequest--and that it is only in
case of intestacy that the courts intervene to give it to the next heir.
This arises more from the construction the judges put upon the wishes of
the deceased, than upon positive enactment. When a man who has the right
of bequeathing his estate among his descendants does not exercise that
power, it is considered that he wishes the estate to go undivided to the
next heir. In America the converse takes place: a man can leave all his
land to one; and, if he fails to do so, it is divided. The laws relating
to contracts or settlements allow land to be settled by deed upon
the children of a living person, but it is more frequently upon the
grandchildren. They acquire the power of sale, which is by the contract
denied to their parents. A man gives to his grandchild that which he
denies to his son. This cumbrous process works disadvantageously, and it
might very properly be altered by restricting the power of settlement
or bequest to living persons, and not allowing it to extend to those who
are unborn.
It is not a little curious to note how the ideas of mankind, after
having been diverted for centuries, return to their original channels.
The system of landholding in the most ancient races was COMMUNAL. That
word, and its derivative, COMMUNISM, has latterly had a bad odor.
Yet all the most important public works are communal. All joint-stock
companies, whether for banking, trading, or extensive works, are
communes. They hold property in common, and merge individual in general
rights. The possession of land by communes or companies is gradually
extending, and it is by no means improbable that the ideas which
governed very remote times may, like the communal joint-stock system, be
applied more extensively to landholding.
It may not be unwise to review the grounds that we have been going over,
and to glance at the salient points. The ABORIGINAL inhabitants of
this island enjoyed the same rights as those in other countries,
of possessing themselves of land unowned and unoccupied. The ROMANS
conquered, and claimed all the rights the natives possessed, and levied
a tribute for the use of the lands. Upon the retirement of the Romans,
after an occupancy of about six hundred years, the lands reverted to
the aborigines, but they, being unable to defend themselves, invited
the SAXONS, the JUTES, and the ANGLES, who reduced them to serfdom, and
seized upon the land; they acted as if it belonged to the body of the
conquerors, it was allotted to individuals by the FOLC-GEMOT or assembly
of the people, and a race of LIBERI HOMINES or FREEMEN arose, who paid
no rent, but performed service to the state; during their sway of
about six hundred years the institutions changed, and the monarch, as
representing the people, claimed the right of granting the possession of
land seized for treason by BOC or charter. The NORMAN invasion found a
large body of the Saxon landholders in armed opposition to William, and
when they were defeated, he seized upon their land and gave it to his
followers, and then arose the term TERRA REGIS, "the land of the king,"
instead of the term FOLC-LAND, "the land of the people;" but a large
portion of the realm remained in the hands of the LIBERI HOMINES or
FREEMEN. The Norman barons gave possession of part of their lands to
their followers, hence arose the vassals who paid rent to their lord by
personal service, while the FREEMEN held by service to the Crown. In
the wars of the PLANTAGENETS the FREEMEN seem to have disappeared, and
vassalage was substituted, the principal vassals being freeholders. The
descendants of the aborigines regained their freedom. The possession
of land was only given for life, and it was preceded by homage to the
Crown, or fealty to the lord, investiture following the ceremony. The
TUDOR sovereigns abolished livery and retainers, but did not secure the
rights of the men-at-arms or replace them in their position of FREEMEN.
The chief lords converted the payment of rent by service into payment
in money; this led to wholesale evictions, and necessitated the
establishment of the Poor Laws, The STUARTS surrendered the remaining
charges upon land: but on the death of one sovereign, and the expulsion
of another, the validity of patents from the Crown became doubtful. The
PRESENT system of landholding is the outcome of the Tudor ideas. But the
Crown has never abandoned the claim asserted in the statute of Edward
I., that all land belongs to the sovereign as representing the people,
and that individuals HOLD but do not OWN it; and upon this sound and
legal principle the state takes land from one and gives it to another,
compensating for the loss arising from being dispossessed.
I have now concluded my brief sketch of the facts which seemed to me
most important in tracing the history of LANDHOLDING IN ENGLAND, and
laid before you not only the most vital changes, but also the principles
which underlay them; and I shall have failed in conveying the ideas of
my own mind if I have not shown you that at least from the Scandinavian
or ANGLO-SAXON invasion, the ownership of land rested either in the
people, or the Crown as representing the people: that individual
proprietorship of land is not only unknown, but repugnant to the
principles of the British Constitution; that the largest estate a
subject can have is tenancy-in-fee, and that it is a holding and not an
owning of the soil; and I cannot conceal from you the conviction which
has impressed my mind, after much study and some personal examination
of the state of proprietary occupants on the Continent, that the best
interests of the nation, both socially, morally, and materially, will be
promoted by a very large increase in the number of tenants-in-fee; which
can be attained by the extension of principles of legistration now in
active operation. All that is necessary is to extend the provisions
of the Land Clauses Act, which apply to railways and such objects, to
tenants in possession; to make them "promoters" under that act; to treat
their outlay for the improvement of the soil and the greater PRODUCTION
OF FOOD as a public outlay; and thus to restore to England a class which
corresponds with the Peasent Proprietors of the Continent--the FREEMAN
or LIBERI HOMINES of ANGLO-SAXON times, whose rights were solemnly
guaranteed by the 55th William I., and whose existence would be the
glory of the country and the safeguard of its institution.