A question which is intimately connected in many minds with the Church is that of national education. It stood next to it in order in that early programme of Mr. Chamberlain which demanded “Free Church, free schools, free land, and free labour.”
This matter of free schools is not likely to create as much opposition as it would have done even a short time since, for no question awaiting settlement is ripening so rapidly. Experience is teaching in an ever-increasing ratio that certain defects exist in our system of national education which hinder its full development, some of which, at least, could be avoided by the abolition of fees.
The progress which has been made in public opinion within only half a century regarding the amount of aid that should be given to elementary schools, encourages the hope that more will yet be given, and that very speedily. It is but a little more than fifty years ago that a Liberal Ministry led the way in devoting a portion of the national funds to this purpose; and no one unacquainted with the history of that period could guess the number and the weight of the obstacles thrown in the way of even such a modest proposal as that Ministry made. The Tories, while not particularly anxious that the mass of the people should be educated at all, were decidedly desirous that such teaching as was given should be under the direct control of the Church. Archbishops and bishops, Tories, high and low, joined to continually hamper the development of any system of national education which afforded the Nonconformists the least privilege; but despite their every effort the movement spread. The annual grant of £20,000, which was commenced in 1834, grew by leaps and bounds. In a little more than twenty years it had become nearly half a million for Great Britain alone; in thirty years it had increased by close upon another quarter of a million; and in fifty years (and the growth in the meantime had been mainly the fruit of the Education Act, passed by the Liberal Ministry in 1870) it had touched three millions. And that sum, vast as it was, represented only the amount granted from the national exchequer, being supplemented by an even larger total raised by local rates.
So far has the nation gone in the path of State-aided and rate-aided education, and the question is whether it is not worth while to go the comparatively little way further which is needed to make elementary education free. For the fees which are now paid do not represent a quarter of the amount which the teaching costs. And not only so, but the existence of these fees is a continual hindrance to the working of the Act. The effect of the fee is to keep out of the board schools thousands of children who ought to be in them; and the attempt to enforce its payment increases the odium which almost necessarily attends upon compulsion.
“But,” it will be said, “where a parent is too poor to pay, the fee can be remitted.” That is true, and the extent to which the system of such remission is carried in some districts is one of the strongest arguments in favour of free education. It is desirable to get the children into the schools, but it is highly undesirable to do this by practically pauperizing the parents. If elementary education were free to all, all could partake of it without any appearance of favour on the one hand or shame on the other. But the independent poor have now the choice of making themselves still poorer by paying the fee for the education they are bound to have administered, or of losing their independence by asking the school board or the poor-law guardians for relief. And the consequence, of course, is that many who have no independence to lose, and are the least deserving of help, receive the assistance they are never backward to ask.
“What is worth having is worth paying for” is a remark sometimes made in this connection, but is it not as applicable to the State as to the individual? For it is for no philanthropic but for a decidedly practical reason that the country assists education. All men in these days admit that the most cultivated people, like the most cultivated individual man, has the best chance of success. With educated Germany, and educated France, and educated America pressing us hard, it is a necessity of existence for England to be equally educated. And seeing that the school board rate and the Government grant mount higher and higher and the fees become lower and lower, the only practical question is whether the State had not better boldly step in, abolish fees which are a hindrance to educational progress, pay the whole amount instead of three-quarters, and provide free teaching for all.
If such a consummation were secured, the status of what are now called voluntary schools would of necessity be materially altered. As at present applied, the name “voluntary” affixed to the schools of the National Society and similar bodies is very much a misnomer. It conveys that the schools are supported by voluntary subscriptions; but this is true in only a limited degree, for it is the Government grant—that is, money taken out of the pocket of every one who pays taxes, direct or indirect—which keeps them in existence. And, therefore, when Churchmen complain, as some of them are occasionally ill-advised enough to do, that they not only subscribe to their own schools but have to pay the rate as well, ought it not to be enough to remind them that their schools are supported not alone for educational but for sectarian purposes, and that, if they wish to proselytize, they must pay, in however inadequate a degree, for the privilege? The real hardship is that those who do not believe in the clerical system of education have to pay heavily by means of taxation to keep up establishments over which they have not the least control, and which are used by the clergy for denominational ends.
One result, then, of free education would be, not to destroy the voluntary schools, but to put them under the control of those who really and not nominally pay for keeping them up. If Churchmen demand schools of their own, they must support them out of their own pocket and not out of other people’s, though it may be well that, under a stringent “conscience clause” and with direct popular control, they should still share in the taxpayers’ grants. As matters stand, the national schoolmaster is too often treated as if he were a mere servant of the clergyman, an idea which, with free education and popular government of all State-aided schools, would be bound to cease.
The cry raised by some clergymen when the Education Act was passed, that the undenominational system would be fruitful only in producing “astute scoundrels and clever devils,” has died away. It is doubtful whether anybody ever really believed it; it is certain that no man with a reputation to lose would now repeat it. And, that being the case, the excuse for keeping up at the public expense two rival sets of schools—one sectarian and the other undenominational—has so largely disappeared that the onus of proving its necessity lies upon its advocates, and the burden of paying for it should be shifted upon the right shoulders.
Of course it is said that this proposal of free education is only another step towards Socialism, but no one should be frightened by phrases. Socialism has as many varieties as religion—some as bad and some as good—and from them must be selected those worth having. If, upon consideration of the whole case, free education be thought to be one of these, the fact that it is called Socialistic will not weigh to its disadvantage with a single sensible man.
What, then, is it that is asked, and why is it demanded? It is asked that elementary schools shall be freed from fees, and entirely supported out of the public funds, local and imperial; that advanced and technical education shall be made cheap and accessible, in order that those who want to progress can do so with as few hindrances as possible; and that all schools supported by public money shall be placed under popular control, and the schoolrooms, out of educational hours, made available for public use.
These things are demanded because by the present arrangements the progress of compulsion is hampered, the deserving and independent poor are inequitably dealt with, and the cost of collecting the fees is out of all proportion to their value when received. Already the public pay three-quarters of the cost of elementary education, and they do it for the benefit of the community; if payment of the remaining quarter would increase the efficiency of the system, even only to a corresponding degree, it would be worth making. “Vested interests” might object; but the national welfare must override them, though there is no intention of dealing with them otherwise than fairly. Due allowance would be made for the subscriptions which have been raised towards the erection and support of the voluntary schools; but the nation has rights as well as individuals, and, in considering any compensation which may be demanded by the managers of such institutions, if free education be adopted, the public money which has been expended upon them must be taken into account equally with the private.
This much is certain: although England will not be able to hold her own simply with “the three R’s,” and advanced and technical education should, therefore, be widely spread, it is our duty to make “the three R’s” as widely known as we can. It is not a question of principle, but of policy. Opposition to any education at all for the masses has disappeared; the State and the parish already pay most of the cost; if the system can be made more perfect by the abolition of fees, fees will have to be abolished.
Immediately the question of the land is touched, a whole host of opponents to progress are roused to fierce and continuous action, though, as all politicians in these days affect a belief in the necessity for land reform, the question appears at first to be more one of degree than of principle. But, at the very outset, it is necessary to face the fact that there is an active propaganda going on which denies that any reform, even the most sweeping, will be of avail, and asserts that it is the very existence of private property in land which must be done away with.
In what is termed “Land Nationalization” a very dangerous fallacy exists. The first thing to be asked of any one who advocates it is to define the term. It is vague; it is high-sounding; but what does it mean? If it means that the State is to take into its keeping all the land without compensating the present holders, it proposes robbery; if it means that the process is to be accompanied by compensation, it would entail jobbery. There are thousands who, by working hard, have saved sufficient to buy a small plot on which to erect a house. Is that plot to be seized by the State without payment? And if fair payment be given, and the taint of theft thus removed, does a single soul imagine that a Government department would be able to manage the land better than it is managed at present? Are our Government departments such models of efficiency and economy that such a belief can be entertained for a moment? What may fairly be demanded of all advocates of the nationalization or municipalization of the land is that they shall clearly show that the process would be honest in itself, just to the present holders, and likely to benefit the whole community. Unless they can do all these things, generalities are of no avail.
The land, it is sometimes urged, has been stolen from the people; but it cannot have been stolen from those who never directly possessed it: and, whatever may be said of the manner in which the large properties were secured centuries ago, much of the land has changed hands so often that most, at least, of the present holders have fairly paid for it. There is an old legal doctrine that the title of that which is bought in open market cannot afterwards be called in question, and that applies to the present case. And when we are told that there cannot exist private property in land because that commodity is a gift of God to all, is it not the fact that, in an old country like ours, land is worth little except it be highly cultivated; that the labour, the manure, and the seed are private property without the shadow of a doubt; and that it is these we largely have to pay for when agricultural commodities are bought? Upon the same ground it is sometimes contended that we should have our water free because it falls from the heavens; but nature did not provide reservoirs, or lay mains, or bring the pipes into our houses; and for the sake of obtaining water easily we must pay for the labour and appliances used in collecting and distributing it. And the value of these illustrations, both as to land and to water, is to teach an avoidance of sounding generalities and a resolve to look at all questions in a practical light.
Recognizing, therefore, that private property in land has existed, is existing, and is not likely to be abolished, the duty of progressive politicians is to see how the laws affecting it can be so modified as to benefit a considerably larger portion of the community than at present. And three of the points which have been most discussed, and which now are nearest settlement, are the custom of primogeniture, the law of entail, and the enactments relating to transfer.
After spurning for many years the Liberal demand for the abolition of the custom of primogeniture—by which the land of a man dying without a will passes to the eldest son, to the exclusion of the rest of the family—the Tories in 1887 themselves proposed it; and in the House of Lords only one peer had sufficient courage to stand up in defence of a custom which the whole peerage had sworn by until that time. It puzzles any one not a peer to understand how a distinctly dishonest practice could have existed so long, save for the utterly inadequate reason that its tendency was to prevent large estates from being broken up, and that there were those who imagined that large estates were a benefit to the country. In actual working, however, it did not affect the largest estates but the smallest, and primogeniture was thus a question touching much more closely those of moderate means than the possessors of great wealth. A large holder of land is an exceedingly unlikely person to die without a will; a small holder frequently does so, with the result of much injustice to and suffering among his family.
A practical instance is worth a hundred theories upon a point like this, and here are some such which have come under my own notice within the past few months. A man possessed of a small landed property died intestate; his daughter, who had ministered to his wants for years, was left penniless, the whole of the property going to the eldest son. Another similarly circumstanced, whose stay and comfort during his old age had likewise been a daughter, shrank, with the foolish obstinacy of the superstitious, from making a will; his friends, recognizing that, if he failed in this obvious duty, the daughter would be thrown without a penny on the world, while the eldest son, who for various reasons had not the least claim upon his father, would take everything, besought the old man to act reasonably; and almost at the last moment he did. In a third case, a fisherman, who for eighteen years had been paying for a piece of land through a building society, was drowned in a squall; and his savings, designed for the support of himself and his wife, were swept straight into the pocket of his eldest son. Now in all these instances, had the money been invested in houses, ships, consols—in fact, anything but land—it would, in case of no will being made, have been divided among the whole family in fair proportion. The accident of it being put into land caused wrong and suffering in two cases, and wrong and suffering were very narrowly avoided in the third. The abolition of primogeniture, therefore, is much more needed by the working and the middle classes than by the rich, whose lawyers very seldom allow them to die without a will.
The law of entail is on its last legs, as well as the custom of primogeniture, and the Tories, by Lord Cairns’ Settled Land Act, and a subsequent amending measure, have practically admitted that it is doomed. Entail affects the community by giving power to a man to fetter his land with a multitude of restrictions for an indefinite period; it makes the nominal owner only in reality a life tenant; and by cramping him upon the one side with conditions which may have become out of date, and tempting him on the other to limit his expenditure on that which is not wholly his own, the development of the land is impeded, and the progress of agriculture hampered by force of law. Entail, like primogeniture, has been defended on the ground that it tends to keep large estates intact; but it is now so generally believed that a more widespread diffusion of land is desirable, that it is only necessary here to state the argument.
A more widespread diffusion of the land will not, however, be attained unless the process of transfer is at once cheapened and simplified. The lawyers reap too much advantage from the present system, and many a man refrains from buying a plot he would like because the cost of transfer unduly raises the price. If it were provided that all estates should be registered and their boundaries clearly defined, there would be no more difficulty and expense in transferring a piece of land than is now involved in selling a ship. In these days buyer and seller are parted by parchments; and many who would like a plot, but who do not see why they should pay, because of the lawyers, ten, or fifteen, or twenty per cent. more than its value, put their money into concerns in which meddlesomeness created by Act of Parliament does not mingle.
Simpler and cheaper transfer would be a step towards the more general ownership of land by those who till it. Let all artificial aids to the holding together large estates by power of Parliament be abolished, let transfer be cheapened and simplified, and then let him who likes buy. Free trade in land is what we ask, and when it is attained land will be able to be dealt with the same as any other commodity, and those who want a piece can have it by paying for it.
But although it may not be desirable for the State to interfere in England for the creation of a peasant proprietary, it is needful that Parliament should do something tangible in the direction of securing allotments for the labourers. Upon that point, as upon primogeniture and entail, the Tories profess to be converted; but as their Allotments Bill of 1887 appears in practice to be a sham, it is necessary that such amendments should be introduced as may render it a reality.
A dozen or fourteen years ago the questions attempted now to be answered were put much more frequently than at present. In the last days of the first Gladstone Administration and the earliest of the second Government of Mr. Disraeli, Liberals were looking for other worlds to conquer; and many of them, not venturing upon such bold courses on the land question as have since been adopted by even moderate politicians, fastened their attention upon the waste lands and the game laws. No great results came from the movement; other and more striking questions forced themselves to the front; and we are almost as far from a legislative settlement of the two just mentioned as in the days of a more restricted suffrage.
This is the more surprising because the points named are of practical importance to the agricultural labourer, and the agricultural labourer now holds the balance of political power. But it is not likely that this state of quietude upon two such burning topics will long continue, for the country voter is certain soon to profit by the example of his brethren in the towns, and to demand that his representatives shall attend to those concerns immediately affecting his interests.
And first as to the question of waste lands. Town-bred theorists who have never walked over a mile of moorland are apt sometimes to talk as if all the uncultivated land in the country was in that condition because of the wicked will of those who own it, and to argue that, if only an Act of Parliament could be secured, the waste lands would blossom like the rose. They have the same touching faith in the efficacy of legislation as had Lord Palmerston when he put aside some difficulty with the exclamation, “Give me an Act of Parliament, and the thing will be done.” But facts are often too strong for legislation, however well intentioned and skilfully devised, and those about much of our waste land come within the list.
A large portion of uncultivated land is mountain and moor, the greater part of which it would be impossible to make productive at any price, and the remainder could not be turned to account under a sum which would never make a profitable return. Those who think it an easy matter to cultivate waste land should visit that portion of Dartmoor which is dominated by the convict establishment. There they would see many an acre reclaimed, but, if they were told the cost in money and labour, they would be convinced that, were it not for penal purposes, both money and labour might be put to better use elsewhere. And if it be argued that the State should step in and advance all that is required to cultivate such waste as can by any possibility be brought under the plough, it must be asked why the taxpayer (for in this connection the State and the taxpayer are one and the same) should add to his burdens for so small a return.
But there is, without doubt, a large amount of land in this country which now produces nothing, and which could be made to produce a deal. That which is absorbed by huge private parks, scattered up and down the kingdom, forms a great portion of this; and though, for reasons which are mainly sentimental, one would not wish to see all such private parks turned into sheep-walks or turnip-fields, there is the consideration that property—and peculiarly property in land—has its duties as well as its rights, and that those who wish to derive pleasure from the contemplation of large spaces of cultivable but not cultivated land, and in this way prevent such from being of any direct value to the community, ought to pay for the privilege. The rating of property of this kind at the present moment is ridiculously low; it should at least be made as high as if the land were devoted to some distinctly useful end.
As with parks, so with sporting lands. The rating of the latter is utterly inadequate; and although it maybe true that much of the land, especially in England, devoted to sporting purposes, is of little value for anything else, it is equally true that a great deal of it, particularly in Scotland, is fit for cultivation, and that tenants have been cleared from it to make room for deer and grouse. In all cases where the land would have value if cultivated, the owner ought to be made pay as if that value were obtained, seeing that for his own pleasure he is depriving the community of the chance of obtaining increased food. It would be too drastic a measure to adopt the Chinese method of hanging proprietors who did not till cultivable land; but many a landowner, if made to feel his duty through his pocket, would do that duty rather than pay.
From the question of sporting lands to that of the game laws is a very short step. It may be that we have heard less of the latter during the last few years, because the Hares and Rabbits Act, passed by the second Gladstone Government in the first flush of its power, has done much to reconcile the tenant-farmers to the present state of things, by removing the grievance they most keenly felt.
The Act referred to provides (to quote Mr. Sydney Buxton’s summary) “that every occupier of land shall have an inalienable right to kill the ground game (hares and rabbits) concurrently with any other person who may be entitled to kill it on the same land; that the ground game may only be killed by the occupier himself or by persons duly authorized by him in writing; that the use of firearms is confined to himself and one other, and they may only be used during the day; that those authorized to kill the game in other ways (poison and traps, except in rabbit-holes, are prohibited) must be resident members of his household, persons in his ordinary service, and any one other person whom he employs for reward to kill the game; that tenants on lease do not come under the provisions of the Act until the termination of their lease.”
This was such a concession to the tenant-farmers that it is little wonder that those of them who had groaned under the ground game should have felt generally satisfied with it; and although a wail has been going up from certain sportsmen that if the Act be not speedily amended the hare will become as extinct as the mastodon, it is not the least likely to be altered in the direction they wish. If amended at all, it will be so as to bring winged game within its provisions.
No one acquainted with rural life can doubt that the game laws, as at present administered, are a fruitful source of demoralization and crime. They demoralize all round, for they pollute the seat of justice by allowing such game preservers as are county magistrates to wreak vengeance upon all who transgress upon their pleasures; they lower the moral standard of the gamekeepers, whose miserable employment turns them into spies of a peculiarly unpleasing description; they make the rural police a standing army for the preservation of game; and they consign to gaol many a man who, but for these laws, would be honest and free.
Such as would see justice most openly travestied should sit in a country police court and hear game cases tried. Let them notice the ostentatious fashion in which some magistrate, while a summons in which his game is concerned is being heard, will (as is carefully noted in the local papers) “withdraw from the bench” by taking his chair a foot back from his fellows and friends. Let them hear evidence upon which no man charged with any other offence would ever be convicted. Let them see the vindictive sentences that are passed. And then let them go home and think over the fashion in which that which is nicknamed “justice” is administered to any man unlucky enough to have offended a gamekeeper or a policeman, and to be charged as a poacher.
In the good old hanging days, a man was sentenced to death in a western county for sheep-stealing. The sentence was the usual one, but other sheep-stealers had been let off the capital penalty for so many years that it was greatly to the astonishment of the district that this one was hanged. Then people began to think, and, remembering that he had the reputation of being a clever poacher, they saw that he had been paid off for the new and the old. It is much the same in the rural districts to-day. In game cases the presumption of the English law courts that a man shall be held to be innocent until he is proved guilty is systematically reversed. The unsupported word of a gamekeeper is considered to be worth that of half-a-dozen ordinary men; and it is not uncommon for a defendant convicted of some offence, totally unconnected with the game laws, to have his penalty increased because the superintendent of police has whispered to the justices’ clerk, and the clerk to the magistrates, the fatal word “poacher.” Those who live in a town can scarcely conceive the open fashion in which justice is degraded by the county magistrates when the game is in question. But, if any would bring it home to themselves—and the strongest words are too faint to picture the reality—let them go to some rural court, where the justices do not imagine that the light of public opinion can be brought to bear upon them, and see how poachers are tried.
If it were only because of the widespread demoralization they cause, the game laws ought to be repealed. They are avowedly kept up for the benefit of the class which does little or no work, and they fill the prisons at our expense to preserve a sport in which we have no share and no wish to share. And, if they are to be retained on the statute book at all, their administration should, at the very least, be taken from those who are practically prosecutor, jury, and judge in one, and placed in impartial hands.
The proposal to enfranchise leaseholds—that is, to enable a leaseholder, upon paying a fair price, to claim that his tenure be turned into freehold—is a comparatively new one in the field of practical politics; but it has come to the front so rapidly that it is already far nearer solution than others which have agitated the public mind for many years. The grievance had for a long time been felt, and in some parts of the kingdom sorely felt; but a ready remedy had not suggested itself, and the subject slept.
The grievance is this—that the present system of leases for lives or for a term of years causes frequent loss to the leaseholder and much injury to the community, benefiting only the owner of the soil. The remedy would be to empower a leaseholder to demand from the ground landlord that the land shall be transferred to him upon payment of its fair value, as appraised by some public tribunal.
And first as to the results which flow from the present state of things. These vary with the circumstances, and some of the circumstances demand study. Leases, broadly speaking, are of two kinds—those which are granted on lives and those which are for a specified term of years. Of the two, the former are the more objectionable, as they frequently work gross injustice. A lease is granted which shall expire at the death of the third of three persons named in the deed. Under that lease a man builds a house; the first life expires, and the leaseholder has to pay a fine—or, as it is called, a heriot—of a specified sum; the second dies, and another fine has to be paid; and when the third passes away, the property and all upon it revert to the landlord. Is it not easy to see that no particular chapter of accidents is required to terminate any three given lives within a comparatively short period, while, if an epidemic occurred, ground landlords everywhere would reap a rich harvest from the ready falling in of leases for lives?
One instance out of thousands may be quoted of how the system works. “A piece of land which let for £2 an acre as an agricultural rent was let for building purposes at £9 an acre, and divided into eleven plots. On one of these a poor man built a cottage, at a cost of £60, on a ground rent of 16s. 6d. The term was for three lives and one in reversion. The charge for the lease was £5. On the expiration of each of the three lives £1 was payable as a fine or heriot, and £10 was to be paid on nominating the life in reversion. All the four lives expired in twenty-eight years. The landlord thereupon took possession of the house. He had thus received in twenty-eight years, besides the annual ground rent, the following sums:—£5 for the lease, £10 for nomination of life in reversion, £3 as heriot on the expiration of the three lives—in all £18; and, in addition, the house built at the expense of the victim, which he sold for £58.”
The reply may be made, “But, granting that leases for lives often have cruel results, is not the remedy in the hands of those who want leases? Why do they take those for lives?” For this reason—that in some parts of the country it is the only way by which a building plot can be obtained, and that, as long as the possibility of securing so good a bargain is legalized, so long will the more unscrupulous among the landlords force an intending tenant to accept that or nothing.
Leases for long terms of years do not as readily lend themselves to the chance of legal robbery, but they have their own ill effects. Houses are built in flimsy fashion upon the express idea that they are intended to last only the specified term; and during the expiring years of the lease, repairs are grudged, and the dwellings rendered unhealthy to the occupier and unsafe to the passers-by. If a man has a house which is erected upon leasehold land, and therein builds up, by his own skill and industry, a good business, he is absolutely at the mercy of the ground landlord when the lease expires. The rent is raised because of the success his own faculties have secured, onerous conditions in the way of repairs are imposed, and what can he do? “If you don’t like it, you can leave it,” is the landlord’s reply; but there is many a business which does not bear transplanting, and if the tenant be on a large estate it might happen that, if he did not accede to the owner’s terms, he would have to move to a far-distant part of the town, or even—as at Devonport and Huddersfield among other places—out of the town altogether, and that would mean ruin. And thus he is practically compelled to struggle on in order to increase the wealth of the landlord, who has done nothing, at the expense of himself, who has done all.
And this is not always the worst, for in many cases landlords for various reasons will not renew at any price, and the tenant has perforce to go the moment his lease expires. A certain Whig duke—and, of course, a zealous defender of “the rights of property”—conceived the idea, upon coming into his estates some years ago, that a village stood too near his park gates. Not brooking that herdsmen and traders should stand between the wind and his nobility, he directed that, as leases fell in, the tenants should be cleared out, graciously, however, offering them other plots some three miles away. And the tenants had to leave the homes in which they had been born and where their parents had lived before them, and to see them tumble down in utter ruin, in order that so mighty a person as a duke should not be shocked by the sight of the common herd. It was one of the thousand cases in life where a man had a right to do that which it was not right for him to perform.
Another fashion in which grievous injustice to the leaseholder can be done is frequently illustrated. It has happened, and happened very recently, that a ground landlord has granted leases for a term of years; that, upon the strength of these agreements, houses have been built; and that upon the landlord’s decease it has been discovered by some skilful lawyer that the dead man had had no power, under an entail or settlement, to grant such leases; whereupon the heir has invoked the law to cancel the whole, and has seized everything upon the land. This is legal, but is it commonly honest?
In other ways the leasehold system is an injury not only to individuals but to the community. A west country town, where all the land is held by one man, has been crippled in every attempt to expand and improve by the impossibility of obtaining a freehold plot. What person in his senses would erect a substantial factory or a large concern of any kind upon a comparatively short lease? Men embark upon such enterprises in order that, as year follows year, their property may become more valuable, not that year by year it may become less so by the growing nearness of the time when it will pass to the landlord, who has never contributed a penny or a thought to the success of the concern, the building containing which, at the expiration of the lease, he can call his own.
For all these unfairnesses to individuals, hindrances to trade, and injuries to the community, is proposed the remedy stated—that a leaseholder who has twenty (or, as some suggest, ten or fifteen) years to run, shall be empowered to demand that his land be made freehold upon the payment of its value, as assessed by some specified tribunal.
The first objection is that this would be an undue interference with “the rights of property.” But it has already been laid down by Parliament that such “rights” can be set aside in the public interest upon the payment of fair compensation; and what has been done in regard to the making of railways can be done respecting the building or the preserving of houses. The existing system is an injury to the community; and as the price to be paid for its abolition, whether wholly or in part, would be assessed by a tribunal constituted by Parliament, the landlords would have no more reason to complain than they now have when compelled to sell a portion of their property to a railway company.
The next plea is that it would interfere with “freedom of contract.” Upon the general question of what that freedom is, how far it now exists, and in how large a degree the State has a right to interfere with it, one need not speak, for in this matter of leases Parliament has already stepped in to “interfere with freedom of contract.” It having been found that some landlords were accustomed to insert in leases oppressive provisions for forfeiture in certain conditions, the Legislature empowered the courts to lift from the leaseholders covenants which unduly burdened them. And if a precedent is asked for the particular remedy proposed, the Acts enabling any copyholder to enfranchise his holding should be consulted.
If it be said that, should such a power be granted by law, no one possessing land would let on a long lease, it may be answered that this would be no great evil, seeing how the leasehold system has worked. But as landowners will want in the future as in the past to let or to sell, and as it is not to be supposed that any man will take a lease of less than twenty years and build upon the land, the owners will accommodate themselves to circumstances, and dispose of their property as best they can.
Owners in other countries do so, and why not here? Such a leasehold system as that of England is practically unknown elsewhere. In France, it is true, something of the kind exists, but we seek for it in vain in Germany and Austria, in Russia and Switzerland, or in Spain and Portugal; while in Italy, where no leases for over thirty years are permitted, a tenant can convert his property into freehold by redeeming the rent.
The supporters of leasehold enfranchisement, therefore, have on their side not only the practical evils of the present system, but parliamentary precedent and continental custom. These should suffice to persuade all who study the matter that the time for a change has come, and that the way in which that change is proposed to be effected is just and equitable.
There is a school of politicians which reply to all such proposals as have been sketched for practical land reform: “They do not go far enough, for they would merely transfer the unearned increment from the present freeholders to the present leaseholders, and we want it transferred to the community.” This “unearned increment” is a matter of which we are likely to hear a deal in the immediate future, for since John Mill stated the theory it has been much talked of, and to-day more than ever. It is sometimes contended, in fact, that, supposing all the projected reforms carried and in full and untrammeled action, “the absorption of the unearned increment by private individuals would perpetuate an evil which would swallow up whatever good those reforms might have a tendency to bring about.”
What then is the theory upon which so much may depend? It cannot be better stated than in the words of Mill:—“Suppose that there is a kind of income which constantly tends to increase, without any exertion or sacrifice on the part of the owners: those owners constituting a class in the community, whom the natural course of things progressively enriches, consistently with complete passiveness on their own part. In such a case it would be no violation of the principles on which private property is grounded, if the State should appropriate this increase of wealth, or part of it, as it arises. This would not properly be taking anything from anybody; it would merely be applying an accession of wealth, created by circumstances, to the benefit of society, instead of allowing it to become an unearned appendage to the riches of a particular class. Now this is actually the case with rent.”
When Mill’s “Principles of Political Economy” was published, this theory of the State absorbing, in whole or in part, the “unearned increment” of the land, was regarded by many as so utopian that it was put aside with a scoff, and was thought to have been settled with a sneer. But it has struck deep root into many a Radical mind, and those who believe in it ask it to be shown how it is either dishonest as a theory or would be impossible in practice.
There need be no attempt to do either, for Mill himself made an important restriction in his definition of what should be done which relieves it from the stigma of dishonesty or impracticability. He believed that “it would be no violation of the principles on which private property is grounded, if the State should appropriate this increase of wealth, or part of it, as it arises.” It may be agreed that the State could fairly appropriate a part of this increment, and this might be done by means of taxation. But that is a very different matter from taking the whole.
One who argues in favour of the latter plan, submits this contention:—“The area of a county, for purposes of illustration, may be taken as a fixed quantity. Now, the demand for land will increase, and as a corollary the price of land will rise, exactly in proportion to the increase of population. This additional value is not brought about by either independent industry, ingenuity, or the outlay of capital on the part of any private individual: it is a growth entirely due to the increase of the community: it is of enormous value, is extracted from the dire necessities of the whole population, and goes into the pockets of private individuals who have never done anything to create it.”
But does the illustration hold good whether applied to such a limited area as a county or to the country at large? It is not the case that the demand for land increases and its price rises exactly in proportion to population; and it is as little the case that its increased value, if any, is “extracted from the dire necessities of the whole population.” For while the number of our inhabitants is increasing, the value of such land as ministers directly to their wants in the provision of food and clothing is decreasing. If all the bread that is eaten, beef that is killed, and wool that is worn, were raised within these shores, there would be a semblance of truth in the illustration; but we have left the days when we lived on our own produce far behind, and the British farmer would only be too happy if the picture thus presented were even approximately like reality.
It may be replied that bread and beef and wool do not exhaust the catalogue of men’s requirements from the land; and they do not, for we require plots upon which to build, and good houses are just as necessary as cheap food. But even where land is made more valuable by its becoming used for building purposes, is there any justice in either the State or a municipality taking the whole increased value? Let the case be that of a man who thinks that he sees a chance of a town expanding, and who purchases a piece of land which will be of little use to anybody unless his idea proves correct, but which will bring him a good profit if he has skilfully foreseen. Why should he not be as fairly paid for his skill and foresight as if he had bought a house on a similar belief? The reply is, “The quantity of land is limited; that of houses is not;” but that is only true up to a certain and very definite point; and with the reforms which have already been suggested, and with a fairer system of taxing the land, the community would gain all it could fairly ask.
My contention, shortly put, is this—That the State has a right to share in the increased value of all property, landed or otherwise; and that, in the case of land, it has an additional, though limited, claim, because of the conditions upon which that commodity passed into private ownership. Those who work for wages have to pay income tax immediately those wages touch a certain point; as they rise, so does the payment increase; and, after a given amount, the tax is proportionately much heavier. Why should not the same principle be applied to income of every sort from land as to income of every sort from wages, profits, or invested capital?
It is not so at present, as a study of the land tax will show. Nominally that tax is four shillings in the pound on the full annual value, but actually what does it stand at? It was fixed by Parliament in the seventeenth century, the semi-owners of the land, who had held their property under certain weighty conditions of contributing military strength to the King, and who had managed by degrees to slip through their obligations, agreeing thus to tax themselves as a compensation for the burden that had been lifted from them. But in 1798 it was enacted—by a Parliament in which practically only landowners were represented—that the valuation upon which the tax was to be paid should be that of 1692, when on its then conditions it was first levied. And the consequence is that, although this later Act directed that it should be assessed and collected with impartiality, in parts of the country which have stood still the tax now is not far from the original sum, while it amounts in the immediate neighbourhood of such a city as Liverpool to about a fifth of a farthing in the pound. It may not be feasible, because of the manner in which much of the impost has been “redeemed,” and it might in some cases be unjust, to raise the land tax at once to four shillings in the pound on the valuation of 1888 instead of 1692; but the same Parliament which put the clock back has the power to bring it up to the proper time; and, at least, something could be done to lessen the loss the State is now made to suffer.
There is another way in which landowners could justly be called upon to pay a portion of the unearned increment to the State, and that is through the taxation of ground-rents. This is a point which keenly touches the towns, and deserves the early attention of Parliament. At present the great ground landlords escape their fair share of the burdens which fall heavily upon those who take their leases. And, so certain are some of them that the taxing time will soon come, that they are already selling a portion of their town estates, so as to “get out from under” before that period arrives.
It may therefore be submitted that, with a fairer land tax and the taxation of ground rents, we should secure to the State the proportion of the “unearned increment” to which she is justly entitled. Those who would go further must be prepared to prove that property in land is so different in every essential from all other kinds that it would be honest for the State to absorb the whole unearned increment of the one, and to levy only an income and property tax on the other.
It is always consolatory to find amid the welter of party politics some topic upon which all say they agree, and such a topic certainly is that of the reform of local government. Politicians of every shade have long professed their desire for such a reform, and it ought now to be within measurable distance of accomplishment.
Upon the great question of the extension of self-government to Ireland I have already spoken; and in regard to the purely domestic affairs of all the four divisions of the kingdom—England, Scotland, and Wales, as well as Ireland—it need only here be added that the solution of much of the difficulty which springs from an overburdened Parliament will be found in devolving upon a special authority for each the right of dealing with its own local concerns. But, as to three of the four divisions, it is not so pressing a question as that which is commonly known as the reform of local government, and the main proposition touching which is summed up in the demand for county councils.
This is a matter which more intimately touches the country districts than the towns, for in all the latter of any size there are popularly elected municipal councils, which exercise much power over local affairs. The only exception is the greatest town of all, for London was specifically exempted (by the action of the House of Lords) from the reform effected in all other cities and boroughs by the Municipal Corporations Act of 1835. There is a Corporation of the City of London; but this body, against which a very great deal can be said, has authority only over one square mile of ground, the remaining 119 square miles upon which the metropolis stands being governed by vestries, trustee boards, and district boards of works, all connected with and subject to the Metropolitan Board of Works—or Board of Words, as it was once irreverently but truly called—which is not chosen directly by the ratepayers, but is selected by the vestries, who themselves are elected by handfuls of people, the general public paying them no heed. And thus it comes to pass that the greatest and wealthiest city in the world is worse governed than the smallest of our municipal boroughs, for nine out of ten ratepayers take not the least interest in electing the vestries, and not one ratepayer in a hundred could tell the name of his district representative on the Metropolitan Board of Works, now proposed, by even a Conservative Administration, to be abolished.
It is not a small concern, this of reforming the government of London, for it affects four millions of people—a number not far short of the population of Ireland; but politicians in the mass, as even the keenest metropolitan municipal reformer will admit, are more interested in the general question of local government.
Speaking broadly, the defects of the system proposed to be reformed are that of the popularly elected bodies there are too many, and that the great governing body is not elected at all. In a certain town of 3000 inhabitants, there are at this moment a Town Council, a School Board, a Burial Board, and (because under the Public Health Act an adjoining parish was tacked on) a Local Board of Health; while, notwithstanding that it sends representatives to a Board of Guardians for the whole Union, it had until recently, and in addition to the other bodies, a Local Board of Guardians, chosen under a special Act. And, beyond all these, a Highway Board meets within its borders, which has to be consulted and negotiated with whenever a road leading into the town needs to be re-metalled or an additional brick is required for a neighbouring bridge.
As if all these boards were not sufficient to keep the district in good order, there is the Court of Quarter Sessions, which has jurisdiction in various details that the multitude of small bodies cannot touch. These latter have one justification, however, that the former cannot claim, and that is that, despite there being magistrates who are members of the boards of guardians by virtue of their office, and although the more property one possesses the more votes one can give for certain of the local bodies, these in the main are popularly elected, and are, therefore, directly responsible to the ratepayers for the manner in which their trust is used.
It is quite otherwise with the Court of Quarter Sessions. This consists only of magistrates, such magistrates being appointed by the Lords-Lieutenant of counties, and the appointments being made mainly on political grounds. As a rule, the holders of that distinguished position are Tories, and they take good care that the magistrates shall be Tories also. It is not long since it would have been impossible to find a single Liberal on the commission of the peace for Huntingdonshire; and when comparatively recently it was pointed out to the Lord-Lieutenant of Essex that an almost exactly similar state of things prevailed in that shire, he replied he did not consider there was a Liberal in the whole county who was socially qualified for the magisterial bench. The idea of making a banker or a merchant a justice of the peace was too shocking; and thus the commercial classes and a good half of the population (giving the other half to the Tories) were completely unrepresented, not merely on the bench, but in the Court of Quarter Sessions, which governed the affairs and spent the money of the county.
There is no necessity to prove that these courts have spent the county monies wantonly or with conscious impropriety in order to show this condition of things to be wrong. In imperial affairs, the doctrine that taxation without representation is tyranny has been asserted to the full; in municipal matters, since the Act of 1835, the same has prevailed; but in county concerns it has been non-existent. The magistrates represent no one but themselves, their party, and their own class; they are necessarily swayed by the passions and prejudices that party and class possess; and, seeing that the English people long ago refused power over the national purse to an unrepresentative body like the House of Lords, it is surprising they have until now allowed power over the local purse to be in the hands of such equally unrepresentative bodies as the courts of quarter sessions.
The line which the immediate reform of local government must take is, therefore, the creation of a directly-elected body to deal with county affairs, and the federation of such of the smaller boards as have to do with the more purely district concerns, both of which points the Cabinet of Lord Salisbury appear disposed to concede. But upon the former point Liberals will claim that the whole—and not merely three-fourths—of the County Councils shall be directly elected, for the system of aldermen, included in the Municipal Reform Act by the House of Lords, has been used for partisan purposes, as it was intended to be, and the same effect will follow in the case of the counties if the same cause is provided.
Any system, in fact, which involves “double election” tends to make the body concerned hidebound and cliquish. A county alderman once chosen, especially if he were a squire, as he most likely would be, would have to behave himself in most outrageous fashion ever to lose his post. The ratepayers might grumble, but it would be difficult in the extreme to dislodge him, for he would be removed from their direct control, and the Council would consider it ungracious to get rid of an “old servant.” If one wants to know how this double election operates, let him ask some clear-sighted Londoner who is acquainted with the manner in which his own city is ruled. He will be answered that for scandalous and wanton expenditure not many bodies can equal the Metropolitan Asylums Board, the members of which are mainly chosen by the various boards of guardians; while for jobbery and general mismanagement it is even beaten by the Metropolitan Board of Works, which is elected by the several vestries. And he will add that this chiefly arises from the fact that the ratepayers have no direct control over either of these bodies, and that the good result of such direct control was shown by this fact—that when the metropolitan ratepayers considered that the School Board, which is directly elected, was practising extravagance, they placed at the bottom of the poll those responsible for the policy, with the effect that considerable savings were speedily effected.
And therefore now, when County Councils are being established, all Liberals will have very carefully to watch the points upon which the Tories and Whigs may combine in an attempt to give the country a semblance without the reality of representative local self-government. What must be insisted upon is—(1) That the Councils shall be entirely elective; (2) that the ratepayers shall directly elect; (3) that there shall be no property qualification for membership; (4) that the voting shall be by household suffrage—one householder one vote; and (5) that women ratepayers shall have the same right of voting for county as for town councils.
With such a Council in each county, or, in the case of Lancashire and Yorkshire, in each great division of a county, we should have a central local organization, to which highway boards, local boards of health, village school boards, and other small bodies could be affiliated; and it is not impossible that, as a development of the system, the various bodies controlling the destinies of our lesser towns could be federated to save friction, trouble, and expense; while, above all, it must be insisted that the representatives of the ratepayers shall have full control over the police.
It is a truism that without good citizens the best of governments must fail; but our experience of the House of Commons and of the many town councils has shown that the improvement of the machinery and the handing over of control to the great body of the people have brought public-spirited men to the front to do the duties required. As it has been at Westminster and in the towns, so will it be in the counties. England has become greater and freer, our towns have expanded and benefited, owing to the whole of the inhabitants having a direct voice in the rule; and the counties will correspondingly improve when the same is applied.
Intimately connected with the question of county government is that of local option; and the problem of transferring the licensing power from an irresponsible bench of magistrates to a specially elected body, or to a direct vote of the ratepayers, has ripened towards settlement in a remarkable degree since the day—just twenty years since—when Mr. Gladstone wrote to the United Kingdom Alliance that his disposition was “to let in the principle of local option wherever it is likely to be found satisfactory,” and thus used in relation to this question for the first time, as far as is known, a phrase which has become famous.
No leading politician to-day disputes that some form of local option must speedily be provided; but, as a body, they have been shy of touching a problem that presents a host of difficulties, and the attempt to settle which could not fail to arouse a number of enemies. What those, therefore, who wished for local option have had to do was to show the body of electors that it was reasonable and just, and to trust that their appreciation of these two qualities would lead them to its support.
As to its being reasonable, the very fact that the granting of licences even now is in the hands of the magistrates, and not in those of a Government department, indicates that it is intended that local feeling shall be consulted. This, in fact, was specifically stated in an Act of 1729, which, after reciting that “inconveniences have arisen in consequence of licences being granted to alehouse-keepers by justices living at a distance, and, therefore, not truly informed of the occasion or want of ale-houses in the neighbourhood, or the character of those who apply for licences,” enacted that “no licences shall in future be granted but at a general meeting of the magistrates acting in the division in which the applicant dwells.”
Just a hundred years later, Parliament thought fit to withdraw from the magistrates—who, at the least, knew something of “the occasion or want of alehouses in the neighbourhood, or the characters of those who apply for licences”—the power over applications for beerhouse licences; and the result showed that even the most modified form of local option was better than none. The Act of 1830, “to permit the general sale of beer and cider by retail in England,” provided that “any householder desirous of selling malt liquor by retail in any house” might obtain a licence from the Excise without leave from the magistrates. Within five years another Act had to be passed demanding better guarantees for the character of those applying for such licences, the preamble declaring this to be necessary because “much evil had arisen from the management of houses” created by the previous statute. Other amending Acts followed, and in 1882 the magistrates were once more given complete jurisdiction over beer off-licences, with the result that in the borough of Over Darwen alone the renewal was at once refused of 34 out of 72 licences of the kind, a decision which, it is important to note as bearing upon a point yet to be raised, was upheld by the Queen’s Bench on appeal.
It is not merely a matter of historical interest, but it has very distinctly to do with the argument in favour of local option, to show that the magistrates for four centuries have had committed to them the duty of seeing that the needs of the district were no more than satisfied. In 1496, a statute directed “against vacabounds and beggers” empowered two justices of the peace “to rejecte and put awey comen ale-selling in tounes and places where they shall think convenyent;” and in 1552 another Act confirmed this exercise of authority. In 1622, the Privy Council peremptorily directed the local justices to suppress “unnecessary alehouses;” and in 1635 the Lord Keeper, in his charge to the judges in the Star Chamber previous to their going circuit, denounced alehouses as “the greatest pests in the kingdom,” and added this significant hint: “In many places they swarm by default of the justices of the peace, that set up too many; but if the justices will not obey your charge therein, certify their default and names, and I assure you they shall be discharged. I once did discharge two justices for setting up one alehouse, and shall be glad to do the like again upon the same occasion.”
These facts show that the theory upon which our licensing system has grown up is that the wants of a locality shall be strictly borne in mind, and of late years the wishes of a locality have more and more been considered. No one would deny that magistrates as a whole pay greater attention to those wishes to-day than they were accustomed to do even as recently as fifteen years ago; and when new licences are applied for memorials against their grant, signed by the inhabitants, are allowed to have considerable weight with the bench. But that, after all, is only the result of indirect and irregular pressure. What Local Optionists desire is that the pressure shall be made direct and customary.
The reasonableness of demanding that local wishes shall control the issue of licences is proved by the facts adduced, and the justice is equally capable of being shown. If a locality determines that no fresh licences shall be granted, or that certain old ones shall be taken away, no more injustice will be done than if the magistrates under the present system did the like. No compensation has ever been granted to the holder of a licence the renewal of which a bench has refused; and although the majority of such refusals has been because of ill-conduct, there have been many cases (and those at Over Darwen were among them) where the magistrates have not renewed because they did not think the house was required. The fact stands that a publican’s tenure is in its nature precarious; he holds his licence from year to year at the pleasure of the magistrates; he would hold it in the same fashion were Local Option secured. And the fact that the power of refusal to renew a licence would pass from an irresponsible bench to either the whole of the ratepayers or a body specially elected by them for the duty, would not entitle him to demand a compensation then that does not exist for him now.
A great difficulty of the problem lies in consideration of the manner in which the popular power shall be exercised. “Local Option” is a somewhat elastic phrase, adopted by many who have never troubled to think what it may involve. Broadly speaking, there are three methods by which it might be carried into effect: (1) By placing the power of licensing in the hands of the Town Councils or the proposed County Councils; (2) in those of specially-elected licensing boards; or (3) in those of the ratepayers, who would exercise by ballot a “direct veto.”
It is the first plan that finds favour with most of our statesmen. It was prepared to be adopted by the last Liberal Ministry, and is by no means so novel as many suppose. The Municipal Corporations Act of 1835, as originally drawn, contained a clause giving the Town Councils the power of granting alehouse licences, but the proposition was abandoned. The Local Government Bill of Lord Salisbury’s Administration has a similar provision, giving the licensing to the County Councils; but to this has been urged the objection that these bodies will have sufficient business to attend to without having the public-houses placed on their shoulders. When our system of popular education was fixed upon its present basis, it was resolved that the work should be done by specially chosen school boards. Mr. Forster at first proposed that these boards should in the towns be selected by the Municipal Councils; but it was felt by the House of Commons that so special a function demanded direct election, and direct election was provided, with the best results. And if the licensing power is to be vested in a representative assembly and local option is to be anything but a sham, it must be placed in the hands of those elected by the ratepayers for that special purpose, so that no bye-issues of waterworks, or paving, or the increase of rates shall affect the one distinct question of the public-house.
The extreme temperance section argue that even such Licensing Boards—directly elected by the ratepayers for the specific purpose—would not meet the requirements of the case, and that nothing short of a popular vote can be accepted. But why should the representative system be abolished and a direct vote established in this case, any more than in the equally burning questions settled every day by Parliament, and the lesser but still important matters decided by town councils and school boards? We in England long ago made up our minds that the most excellent way to get public work done is to choose the best men, give them the requisite authority, and then allow them to do the duty to which they are called. And if we can disestablish a church, revolutionize the land system, or reform our institutions from top to bottom through our representatives, without a direct vote of the people, the question of renewing public-house licences can scarcely demand so exceptional a process as is by some suggested.
My answer, therefore, to the question, “How is Local Option to be worked?” as well as to the kindred temperance question, “How is Sunday closing to be settled?” is, “By means of licensing boards, directly elected by the ratepayers.” And if this solution be adopted, our licensing system will be placed upon a basis at once more safe and more free from friction or the likelihood of injustice than any other that has been proposed.