class of frauds, such as those practised by the notorious Down, and recently by J. F. Cooper.

"6th. It has restored to their natural value many estates held under good holding titles, but depreciated in consequence of some blot or technical defect, and has barred the recurrence of any such defect.

"7th. It has largely diminished the number of Chancery suits, by removing the conditions which afford grounds for them.

"The foregoing pages have been written with a twofold object. First, to demonstrate that there is no exaggeration in the estimate of the Royal Commission of 1858, backed by that of John Stuart Mill and others of experience and authority on such subjects that the application to land in this country of a safe, cheap, simple, and expeditious method of transfer, such as that adopted for property in shipping, would have the effect of adding five years' purchase, some will say ten, to all the land in this country. Second:-that there exists no insurmountable object, or even serious difficulty, in applying that system, by the duplicate method, to estates and interests in land in this country.'

SMALL FREEHOLDS.

J. R. Green, M.A., in his "History of the English People," on page 2, says that in the fifth century "THE BASIS OF THEIR SOCIETY WAS THE FREE LANDHOLDER." This continued until the

Norman Conquest in the eleventh century; and we read of the yeomen of England as a large and important class in the country for many centuries afterwards. At length, in the eighteenth century, when fields opened up for emigration, and yeomen farmers wished to sell their small freeholds in England, many small capitalists would have been glad to have bought them at a larger price than they were sold for, had not the costly process of the English land laws introduced hindrances, attended with ruinous expense and risk of litigation, without affording facilities for purchase. Had there been "Free Trade in land," such small capitalists as village tradesmen would have purchased small freehold farms, situated near the village where they carried on their business; and whilst cultivating and improving their own little farm, they would have been able to attend to their village trade at the same time; thus providing for

themselves a double resource against the risks of weather and trade. This plan has been carried into practice in many instances with great success. It is explained and advocated in an essay on "Small Farms," by Lord Wantage, who, as chairman of the SMALL FARM AND LABOURERS COMPANY, LIMITED, has experience of its working. With "Free Trade in land" that company would flourish, but it cannot without.

Likewise, the best class of agricultural labourers would have been able to purchase small freehold farms with the aid of a State Land Bank on the system of building societies; but no such aid could be obtained; whilst, in addition, the want of facilities for simple, cheap, and quick transfer of indefeasible titles proved an insuperable barrier against small capitalists. Consequently the territorial lords of manors, who could afford the legal cost and risk, bought the small freeholds adjacent to their estates, and enclosed them within their ring fences. This period in our history is depicted by Goldsmith in his poem, "The Deserted Village," thus:—

"One only master grasps the whole domain,
And half a tillage stints thy smiling plain.

Princes or lords may flourish or may fade;

A breath can make them as a breath has made;
But a bold peasantry, their country's pride,

When once destroy'd can never be supply'd.

When every rood of ground maintain'd its man ;

But times are alter'd, trade's unfeeling train
Usurp the land, and dispossess the swain."

In 1845 Lord Beaconsfield, in "Sybil," drew a description of the state of rural England at that time, and he shows it was the result of the sort of landlordism he refers to. He remarks in his preface how very little it is that people generally know of the real state of their own country; and in the beginning of the fifth chapter he describes a distant view of a rural town in England, which, he says, "was one of the most delightful, easily to be imagined,” and he adds the words, “Beautiful illusion! For behind that landscape, penury and disease fed upon the vitals of a miserable population."

Later on, a modern M.P., the author of a novel entitled "Strictly Tied Up," was reported in the newspapers as having said in the House of Commons, "Land is a rich man's luxury.” That remarkable idea may apply to the parks, but not to the farms; for an income of one thousand a year derived from uncertain rents cannot be so great

a "luxury" as one of a thousand a year derived from sure Government securities. It cannot be a "luxury" to know that, under existing land laws, nearly half the cultivable land of the country is uncultivated, when it might be as productive as the land generally is in Jersey and Guernsey, or Switzerland and Saxony, under small proprietors, who carefully and profitably cultivate their own land with their own hands. It was the industrious and thrifty peasant proprietors of the small farms in France who found nearly the whole of the £100,000,000 to pay the indemnity after the Franco-German War in 1870. The present prosperity of the numerous peasant proprietors of France is shown in an article in the Fortnightly Review, written by M. Betham Edwards, and published in August, 1887. Its title is, "French Peasant Proprietors.”

Contemplate, then, what England might become in course of time, under free trade in land, with compulsory free education, technical teaching of agricultural science, and free local libraries. The prisons and poorhouses would not cost nearly so much as they do, for they would then be in a happy state of emptiness. Contrast such a condition of things in the country with that miserable