mote the habit of providence in our working classes, it is not only necessary to exhibit a moral restriction which cautions them from going wrong, but to present a positive stimulus which induces them to go right,-to exhibit something good before their eyes, after which they shall strive,—and to make them act of their own free will, as if they had an object to attain. This stimulus may possibly be found in the desire to possess real property; and although no mere change of laws or circumstances may ever do more than facilitate the progress of good, it is quite possible that a change of circumstances might eminently promote a change of habits, and lead gradually but surely to a more enlightened appreciation of the advantages that might accrue if the present recklessness and extravagance were exchanged for prudence and economy. -June 17, 1854.

PEASANT PROPERTIES.

In our present observations on peasant properties, we do not intend to inquire into the ethics of the question. We do not ask whether it was morally right or morally wrong for England to pursue that vast system of inclosure by which the English peasantry were permanently ejected from their commons, and deprived of their prescriptive rights; or whether it was right or wrong for the legislature and the Highland proprietors to convert, by a fiction of law, what was once to all intents and purposes the property of the clans, into the private domains of individual landlords, thereby disinheriting all save the chief and his family. These questions are practically settled; the facts are achieved; society has accepted them; and it is now useless to speculate on what might have been the result if a different principle had pervaded the

arrangements. Within a century and a half, a vast revolution has been wrought in the occupation of the lands both of England and Scotland. By the inclosure of the commons, about five thousand parishes, constituting nearly a half of the soil of England, were subjected to a legal process which severed the peasant from all direct interest in the land, and left it ultimately in the hands of large proprietors. And by the introduction of the English doctrine of property into the Highlands, the old system of customary occupation was entirely superseded, and a new system substituted, which threw vast territories into the absolute control of single individuals, who had previously been only the representatives of their tribe, and who had held the lands not as their own, but in virtue of their office as chiefs or petty sovereigns, who ruled over a given district, and administered the public affairs of the clan. These measures have produced a radical change in the whole structure of society. The first, by leading to the absorption of the smaller properties, abolished the English yeoman; and the second bids fair to abolish the Highland population. Both measures had essentially the same result in one respect,-essentially a different result in another. They both left a country population composed of a very small number of great landed proprietors, surrounded by a dependent and almost subject tenantry, outside of which remained the mass of those who live by labour alone, who have been cast loose from all interest in the soil, and who are regarded as machines for the execution of work. In this respect the results have been similar in the two countries. But a very striking difference presents itself to view when we turn our attention to the soil itself, and ask how it has been affected by the change. In England the pretext for the inclosure of the commons was, that the land was uncultivated, and to a great extent unproductive. This was actually true, and, being so, it was a good and sufficient reason for the introduction of

some new system by which the lands should be brought into cultivation. Still, even supposing that the produce after the inclosure was five or ten times greater than before, it was more advantageous to the peasantry, that is, to the great body of the rural population, to have only the fifth or the tenth as their own, than to be deprived of it altogether, and to see ten times the produce passing into the hands of the great landlords and great agriculturists. The lands, however, were cultivated, and the produce was obtained; so that although the English peasant was ousted from his common rights, the land was turned to its proper agricultural use, and grew corn for the service of the nation. The landlords and farmers acquired wealth, the peasants went on the parish, and were supported by the parish rates. In Scotland the effect has been entirely of an opposite character. The lands, instead of being brought into cultivation, have been thrown out of cultivation. The cottage and the croft have been herried to make way for grouse and deer; and, so far as the production of food is concerned, -food available for the ordinary purposes of life,-hundreds of thousands of acres that once grew and supported soldiers second to none who ever stepped, might as well be sunk in the bottom of the sea. Not only are they not cultivated, but in some cases they are not even to be seen.

What, then, is to be the termination of this course, that has been gradually but surely working an entire change in the relations of the British population to the British soil? The number of proprietors has been constantly diminishing, and the land is passing into fewer and fewer hands. If the process were to continue, a time might come when the very stability of the State itself might be endangered, and a change of system would be imperatively required for the safety of the nation. Already many parts of the country are both materially and martially much weaker than at any former period. They can neither turn out the same amount of food for the support

of the nation, nor the same number of men for the national labour or the national defence. In other districts where the population is dense, the stature of the people has diminished; that is, the people are undergoing a course of physical deterioration. Great numbers of our healthiest, strongest, and most athletic sons are emigrating; for it is no longer the halfstarved pauper who emigrates, but the very pick of our industrial classes. The nation, powerful as it is, and perhaps presuming a little too much on its past career, is certainly at the present time undergoing a process of debilitation,—becoming relatively weaker; increasing in wealth, but not improving, or even maintaining, the solid element of a well-arranged and well-conditioned population.

To arrest the progress of this growing evil, various remedies have been proposed. Some have asserted that a total abolition of entails would effectually prevent the accumulation of estates into the hands of a single proprietor; forgetting that the estates have been so accumulated simply because the large estates were entailed, and the small estates were not entailed; and that the usual purchaser, whenever land is exposed for sale, is either a great proprietor or a great capitalist. When an evil has grown to a certain point, it will perpetuate itself, like iron, which, when heated to a certain temperature, will burn of its own accord. In the present condition of Britain, the abolition of entails would be quite as likely to throw the land into fewer hands as to increase the number of landholders, because the great proprietors, who have large revenues, or almost unlimited credit, will give more for the land than its actual mercantile worth, estimated by the rate of interest that might be derived from other investments. The abolition of entails would in all probability only transfer the estates of the impoverished families to those who are already possessed of extensive domains. There would be no tendency to subdivision, because the offer of ten thousand pounds for a

small property that was only worth five thousand would be no temptation to a lord or duke, who has perhaps a clear income of a hundred thousand a-year, and whose object is not to get money, but to get more land. That the abolition of entails would lead to the sale of land in such portions as would be convenient to the purchaser,—that a farmer, for instance, who had been saving and successful, could go to his landlord and buy his farm at a fair market-price, as he would buy a house or a ship,-we certainly do not anticipate; for if the farm lay in the centre of an estate, the proprietor would not sell it for ten times its estimated value, nay, he would not sell it at all. The mere abolition of entails, therefore, although in itself a good and proper measure, would not be calculated to work any great change for the general welfare. It might relieve some spendthrift families from the inconvenience of estates which they were unable to manage or redeem, and it might infuse new capital into the agricultural improvements of the country; but that it would materially affect the mass of the rural population to their advantage is by no means probable. At the same time, the total abolition of every remnant of the feudal system and of feudal practice in land conveyance is perhaps the first step to improvement.

Another proposed remedy is the formation of peasant properties,—a measure that has vehement advocates, and quite as vehement opponents, even among those who are supposed impartially to have investigated the subject. Mr M'Culloch, carried away with the one idea of cultivation on a large scale, assures us that anything like peasant proprietorship would submerge us into a sea of pauperism. Mr Joseph Kay, on the contrary, whose ability we take to be quite equal to that of Mr M'Culloch, and whose opportunities for extensive, accurate, and personal observation we apprehend to have been even superior, assures us that the measure would tend to make our poorer classes happy, prudent, and prosperous.