There remains the question of guardianship, whether in relation to marriage or divorce, and there seems little chance of this being altered, except that possibly a mother, and especially a mother guilty of adultery, may have more power in regard to her children than she has now. Modern opinion is certainly tending to the view that the act of adultery is not always incompatible with maternal love and efficiency and that an unchaste mother is at least preferable to a cruel or mentally deranged mother.
In regard to poor persons, I deal with the question generally in a later chapter. But while on the subject of divorce, I suggest that justice must one day be brought to the poor man’s door either through the county court or the police court or some other court. If police court separation orders are to mature into divorces, the police magistrate is obviously the best person to decree a divorce at the end of the period in question, and possibly he could even hear defended cases. But trustworthy observers state that the police magistrate is often quite unjust to a husband accused by a wife, either because he thinks that all wives are in the right or because the husband is sulky and verbose. The magistrate could, of course, do his work very much better if both parties were legally represented, and if police court solicitors ever form a rota to assist poor persons after the Scottish fashion, better justice may be done.
I fancy, however, that the problem may be solved as it is in the United States, by establishing courts of domestic relations. Apparently, these courts do their work at comparatively little expense; and this work is by no means confined to matrimonial disputes. The judges do, in fact, reconcile many husbands and wives and adjust disputes that might otherwise ruin many homes; but they also step in to regulate questions of guardianship in cases where regulation is required. The lay reader may possibly regard this as undue interference with the institution of the family; but any lawyer acquainted with the beneficent jurisdiction of the Chancery judges where minors are concerned, would naturally wish the poor to have the same advantages in this respect as the rich, and I, therefore, imagine that within fifty years courts of this description will not only have divorce jurisdiction but will also have the same powers as the Chancery judges now have over a ward of court. I shall deal with this question more fully in a later chapter.
VI
THE LAND LAWS
The abolition of the Statute of Uses by Lord Birkenhead will be an accomplished fact on the 1st January, 1926. Copyhold and other picturesque tenures of the middle ages are to be abolished, the law of real property is to be assimilated to the law of personal property, women are to be put on an equality with men as regards the laws of descent, and primogeniture is to be abolished. This is all, no doubt, very sensible, but also depressing for anyone who likes to feel a certain sense of continuity with the past. It also precipitates the coming conflict between the Collectivist confiscation of land and the ideal of small or peasant proprietorship. The land laws of the future will, of course, depend on which party gains the day.
The consistent hostility of all ministries to agriculture is due to the fact that Free Trade is now one of the regular ruts of British finance, and even the peasant proprietor of France or Denmark would not flourish without a certain amount of consideration from the State. Should the voters of Great Britain swallow all the nonsense preached by the followers of Henry George and Lloyd George in regard to land monopoly, the ruin of agricultural prosperity and of the lovely landscapes of Great Britain may confidently be anticipated; but should the wide distribution of land among smallholders continue under the ægis of public favour, we may see the legal encouragement of freehold tenure on Canadian or American lines and even of the tenant being able to buy out his landlord on fair terms. It is curious that New Zealand, which adopted State Socialism on a large scale in the nineties, is now mainly governed by individualistic business men and land-owning farmers.
The big landlords play into the hands of Collectivists by allowing their agents to do as they like. I, for instance, twenty years ago bought a long lease of a house in St. John’s Wood, which will expire just when I do not want to leave my happy home. I have a delightful garden shaded by poplars and beeches which will probably be covered one day by a block of untenanted flats. I want if possible to secure my position and am quite ready to pay any fair price for the freehold or for an extension of the lease. The Eyre Estate (my landlord) will not even condescend to answer a letter of inquiry, and my experience is by no means unique. No one is more disposed to be friendly with big landlords than I am, for some of them are profitable clients; but my own experience of the Eyre Estate impels me and many others to welcome any law which will make the tenant less of a worm in the eyes of his landlord.
The old system of entail and strict settlement will presumably continue for some years with the aid of money derived from industrial magnates and American heiresses. The conveyancers of Lincoln’s Inn may be trusted to preserve institutions in defiance of legislation just as they abolished, for all practical purposes, the right of dower in the eighteenth century. The principal question is whether there will be sufficient money or inclination to support the old system in order to prevent places like Chatsworth and Warwick Castle from being converted into public schools or lunatic asylums. If there is, then the lawyers will be equal to the occasion, and already many big estates are preserved from destruction by being turned into limited or (preferably) unlimited companies.
Legal change depends on financial upheavals and human desires. The desire to found a family and to buy a big estate is deeply ingrained in Great Britain. The old aristocracy may go and a new aristocracy may arise. But it may well be doubted if any new race of landowners will, under the new conditions of being mulcted at every turn during life and after death, be able to do for the countryside what the old type of Squire did for his tenants—especially in times of agricultural depression—or show anything like the same personal interest in the cultivation of the land.