Freeholder (Newspaper) - November 1, 1851, London, Middlesex OUR TERRITORIAL IN our last number we attempted to dispose of some of the fallacies which lie at tne threshold of the ar gument respecting Urge and small We took the extreme case of the fractional subdivision of the soil of which the advocates of our territorial system are of casting in our teeth and we and still do that entire French province with an English or comparing the whole of the surfaces of the two there is a great superiority even in an economical in the system pursued by the pea sant proprietors of that At the same we took notice of the fact that the leading political economists of France go and contend comparing even a given number of under ac tual a larger net after defraying the cost of will be left in the hands of the peasant than in the capitalist tenant Upon the latter we we have no very decided opinion to offer nor do we think it would in any case be a conclusive as it leaves the moral aspect of the question still to be Bat let it be here once for all re that of our territorial system have rip right assume that they are engaged in a controversy merely with the advocates of the French In the law of the division of all landed property amongst the next heirs of deceased and does not allow an individual the absolute testamentary power which he possesses in this We do not profess to be favourable to that restriction upon the rights of pro perty nor do we think it would be found acceptable to the people of this But the question for Englishmen to consider is whether the customs of primogeniture and ad derived from feudal are favourable to the happiness of the mass of the J people That those customs may be abolished with out adopting the French law of is evident from the example of the United And now comes the important preliminary ques in whose interest is the point at issue to be ar gued Are we to consider the welfare of the mass of the the great majority of or must we regard them as and direct all our care and sympathy to the preservation of the rights and privileges of a select number Is it the many or the few whose interests shall sway our decision If it be assumed that certain customs must be main in this at whatever cost to the well being of the there can be no arguing with those who start from such impossible The Times in a recent seems to have rather incautiously taken up this in the fol lowing The institutions and customs of this country are all adapted to the supposition of a vast difference of lower igno and manageable an upper ex and powerful and a middle struggling to emerge from the and attach it self to the This supposition must long hold and will reign probably as an opinion even after it has been considerably qualified as a fact whether as a fact or an it will long exercise a sive influence on the the less and the more struggling and will drive them to seek their fortunes where society is imagined to be clearer of such barriers and We wish the writer had told us what those insti and customs are which require for their sup port a and manageable lower The institution of mo demands no such Hereditary with its own ample Crown needs not necessarily impose upon the people of this country one shilling of direct nor require the enforcement of any restriction their industry or rational We kno w of no social or eco principles involving the interests of not be carried out quite as well under a constitutional monarchy as any other form of Go The various relations of capital and la servant and debtor buyer and America as in monarchical Ine difference whatever in the customs of so far as the main features of private Place a man in a business or in New and he the same dai to perform that he would if he were in and with pretty much the same result for less difference in the condition of those en the struggle of life in the cities of the world than we are apt to In our manufac turing districts the constant tendency of the class is to throw up into the rank above them the most active and successful members of their body and in this way it will be found that in Lancashire a large proportion of the capitalists are men by themselves or their have been raised from the at all is nothing which requires that the lower class should be and The question still what are the institutions and customs which require for their support a neces and manageable lower class P The answer is institution of a landed aris and the custom of Never did there exist a own ing vast secured against partition by the practice of without the invariable niment of an ignorant and manageable lower manageable up to a certain for experience has shown that there is no permanent safety for a privi class in the midst of a degraded and ignorant The lordly chieftain of the middle in his impregnable surrounded by his was the origin of was the type of the present development of rial For it necessarily if dern baron own no uncommon thing entire in a purely rural district where is no 5 j V resource for the employment of the except upon the surface of the that he will possess a power over the destinies of its hardly less absolute than that which his ancestor enjoyed in the twelfth The results of such a system shown in the present abject condition of tants of our agricultural of the farm There is nothing in any free and civilised with which we are to compare with the social prostration of the British owing to their almost complete severance from the ownership of the In nearly other country the word peasant is synonymous with farmer and It is so throughout and the greater part of Ger and Norway it is to a considerable and an increasing in and In some of these countries the whole of the land is owned by peasant a farm their own estates in all of them there is a sprinkling of small Now here we may remark upon a great fallacy into which those writers who affect to make a comparison between the rural populations of England and the Continent ha They place the French peasant along side of the English whereas they ought compare him with the English The mass of the rural population will always consist of those with their own cultivate the In England this numerous body have scarcely more in terest than the cattle they drive in the freehold upon which they This on the own nearly the whole surface of France and the ques tion really at issue whether it be better that the great mass of the people should have small landed or none that this should be a moot question amongst our is a proof how little they write for the mass of the people That such a state of things should actually exist in this that the people are divorced from the which by law and ancient custom is virtually made the mono poly of a thousand privileged proves how little voice the people have really had in the In those countries where the is iby adopting for an author of any of peasant n i 1 y was tne and the x truth is which class our judg and un y i it something EL privileges of a select y of the people are not present in our having an interest in the con Hodge should aspire to be a proprietor of he has just with so straight a is about as likely a supposition to pass through our even in a as that Dobbin the mare should set a claim to the free hold of her We as a resigned to that state of in the agricultural districts which interdicts ownership of soil to ninety of the rural The great inequality of rank and springing from this we regard as indispensable to the organisation of We ourselves a few great their dependent and who in turn have a retinue of obsequious as the of a rustic When using word reference is of course made to those who occupy themselves in writing or reasoning upon the who the agri cultural labouring have dis or any other question of state policy that day has yet to come So prepossessed are our writers in pur inequalities of that they cannot contemplate placency a state of society where no such disparity of circumstances the follow ing picture of rural extracted from the Illus from which we have already borrowed a A French farmer is seldom in any degree re moved above the hinds whom he They live labour eat of the same the Bame and share in the same or rather the same want of The master has no feeling that he is socially above his Mere accident has made him the the other the labour in the same with the same and inthe same There are no no passed from one the and for the simple reason that the man knows as well what is to be done as the master can Now it is evident that the writer of the above was under the sway of those prejudices so common to Englishmen of the upper and middle classes when he remarked upon the absence of the master spirit the intercourse of the French He was palpably disconcerted at finding that there were no superiors to order and servants as in in the man knew as well as the master could tell him what was to be The Englishman did not feel compensated for this absence of the master class by the reflection that the labourers were themselves elevated to the rank of small land The truth and it must be again and again this question has never yet been viewed in as it is destined to in its bearings upon the interests of the great majority of the rural popu A on the whose in nate love of equality is as strong as the English mans passion for individual liberty the two qualities ought to be united in both brings the con as to the comparative merits of small and large landed properties to the test of the relative advantages they confer upon the majority of the Take for example the following from the work of to which we referred iu our
