Cobden Club Essays, Second Series, 1871-2 (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: THE PKESENT ASPECT OF THE LAND QUESTION. BY WlLUAM FOTTLER, M.P. " I believe we have no adequate conception of what the amount of production might be from a limited surface of land, provided only the amount of capital were sufficient."?Cobden. However much men may differ as to the principles on which the " Land Question," as it is called, will have to be settled, all will agree that the interest felt in it has largely increased dming the last ten years, and that it is one of the questions which press for immediate consideration by Parliament. Already the Attorney- General has broken ground by promising a Bill to abolish what is known as the " Law of Primogeniture," and though this, like so many more promised benefits, still remains a thing to be hoped for rather than expected, yet the fact of its being undertaken by the Government ought to encourage reformers and inspire them with new energy. The progress of the question has, however, been delayed, and will yet be much more delayed, by the important, if not fundamental, differences which prevail amongst those who profess to have at heart the common object of a thorough Laud Law Reform. On the one side are those who, like the Land Tenure Reform Association and their distinguished President, call for the resumption by the State of some portion of the revenue of the lands, and those again who wish to " nationalise" the whole of the land by buying it up from its present owners, so that it may be parcelled out into small holdings; and on the other side those who, likeMr. Cobden, desire to rid the land of all the trammels created by settlements and entails, to give an easy mode of transfer, and to make the ownership, with few and temporary exceptions, nothing but fee-simple ownership throughout the kingdom. The former class dea...