A month in Switzerland

by F. Barham Zincke

IV. We have been considering three conditions under which the land of the valley may be held; first, that of a thoroughly carried-out system of peasant-proprietorship, which is the natural consummation of things when land is the only means of supporting life, or so nearly the only means that other means disturb its action so little that they need not be considered; and which is the cause of its being divided down to the lowest point at which it is capable of supporting life: we then passed to the opposite extreme, to which the name of landlordism has been given; and we came at last to that which would result, and in places has more or less resulted, from the free interaction of land and capital, in this era of capital. We still have to consider how it has been brought about that, in this era of capital, the free interaction of the two, in this country hardly exists at all; what it is that here hinders its existence; and so gives rise to the two abnormal, but closely connected, phenomena, that land is held only in very large aggregations, and that capital is driven away from the proprietorship of land, except in these large aggregations, to seek imaginary investment at home in never-ending bubble schemes, the manufacture of which is as much a trade as that of calico, or sent abroad to be sunk in impossible Honduras railways, the shares of non-existent Californian mines, and the bonds of hardly more existent states.

This, as it is an unnatural state of things, can have been brought about only by the disturbing action of law. What, then, we have to consider now is, how law has stepped in, and hindered the existence of the state of things which the circumstances of the times demand, and which, therefore, would be their natural and normal condition; and, as it seems, would be fraught with so many and such great advantages to individuals and to the country. The general sense of uneasiness, these questions have given rise to throughout society, indicate that in this matter there is something constitutionally wrong.

When I was in the United States in 1867-1868, I was frequently asked how the people of England could tolerate a system—the questioner always supposed that such a result could only be brought about by law—that gave the land of the country to a handful of the population? I always replied ‘that it was a natural consequence of our great wealth. A banker, an Australian, a contractor, a merchant or manufacturer, a coal or iron owner, made his million of money, and as he could live very well on 25,000l. a-year, he sunk it in land for the sake of the security the land offered, and because, moreover, its possession gave certain social and political advantages. That it was the competition of these millionaires, who were willing to pay for something beyond the productive powers of the land, that kept small purchasers out of the market, and also induced small holders to sell.’ I gave this answer because I wished to avoid a long explanation, involving probably a great deal of argument; and I had not crossed the Atlantic to give, but to receive, information.

I knew at the time that my answer was only a partial one; that it omitted some very important elements of the question; and, therefore, was worth very little, except for the purpose in view at the moment.

For instance; it rested on the assumption that the interest of money is now so high in this country that under no circumstances—I admit that it is so under existing circumstances—would people hold small amounts of land, say a thousand acres, because they could get a better income by selling the land, and investing the proceeds otherwise; and that none can afford to buy land, except those who can afford to buy so much that the moderate interest of the purchase will still in its amount be sufficient for all their wants. It is acknowledged that at present it is so. The whole question, then, turns on the point of what causes it to be so? Is it unavoidable and natural? If so, then it is all right as it is; and the subject is withdrawn from the category of useful discussions.

I, however, for one, am disposed to think that it is neither unavoidable nor natural. There is not such a great difference between the interest of money in France and in England, as to make the great bulk of the people of France desire, above all things, land, and the great bulk of the people of England quite indifferent about it, and even the few who have it in moderate extents desirous of getting rid of it. And, again, in the United States the interest of money is higher than it is here, and yet the ownership of land is regarded as the support, and its cultivation as the natural employment of, I suppose, four-fifths of the whole white population. To us, who look across the Atlantic, the cities appear to be America. But this is an optical illusion. The United States are as large as the whole of Europe, and the cities, though centres of extraordinary activity, are few and far between. Its vast occupied area maintains an agricultural population; and its agriculture is carried on upon so grand a scale that, when the eye is directed to it, everything else is utterly lost to view. The towns are nothing in a scene which takes in fifteen hundred miles of farm-houses from New York to Omaha, which begin again in the Great Salt Lake Valley, and again on the slopes of the Sierra-Nevada, reaching to the shore of the Pacific.

The cause, then, why what does take place in France, and in the United States, does not take place here, must be sought for in something peculiar to ourselves. And our English peculiarity I believe to be this, that here the dominant and regulative fact bearing on the distribution of land is, that it is not distributable; in plain English, that it is not saleable. This is brought about by the law which allows estates to be settled, that is to be taken out of the market and practically to be rendered unsaleable. This being the general fact with respect to land, the millions connected with its cultivation, seeing no opening for their ever becoming possessed of an acre of it, do not save for this purpose, and have their thoughts turned in other directions, that is to say, to the towns, to trade, or to emigration. And the rest of the population, being met by the same obstacle, have their thoughts with respect to land, and the investment in it of their capital, equally shaped and coloured by the existence of that obstacle. That which is the dominant fact brings about what is the general feeling and practice. Where is the rural district in which, from the general condition of things, it could become a general practice among the population to work, and deny themselves, in order to acquire some property in the land? Unsaleability is the general rule, and so this motive, and everything that would be connected with it, and grow out of it, has no existence. The same cause acts even in a higher degree on the rest of the population, because their thoughts are not, from the circumstances and character of their lives, so naturally directed towards the land. It would be just the reverse if every acre, everywhere, were always saleable: of course not always on sale, but always saleable at the will of its owner.

Speaking generally, we are in the unique and anomalous position of a nation which has no class of proprietors of small, and moderate-sized estates, cultivating their own land. If circumstances were at all favourable to the maintenance amongst us of such a class, I believe it would be maintained, and would go on increasing. What is the case is, that circumstances adverse to it, and even destructive of it, have been created artificially. By the power of settling estates, large settled estates have everywhere been called into existence. Thenceforth the fight in each neighbourhood is between large settled estates and small properties. The large settled estates are endowed, practically, with perpetuity, and they have within themselves great powers of purchasing, that is of extension; for their owners are already wealthy, and have, also, the power of discounting, for the purpose of making purchases, the future increase in value of their estates; and they always have a strong motive for making such purchases. The small properties, as things now are, have very little of the element of perpetuity; generally no self-contained power of extension by purchase; and their proprietors have no special motives for attempting to extend them. The absorption, then, of the small properties is inevitable; and has been, indeed, almost entirely effected already. Our system creates the large estates, and endows them with the power of swallowing up the small ones; and so year by year takes the land, more and more, out of the market: the general result being that at last we have come to have only a handful of very wealthy rent-receiving proprietors, and few cultivating proprietors; and that the thoughts, the prospects, and the capital of the richest nation in the world are all pretty completely turned away from the land.

We said that our system was not either unavoidable or natural. We ought, therefore, to show how it could have been avoided. We partially did this when we pointed out its causes. Let us, however, endeavour now to find for ourselves a distinct answer to the question, In what way could its growth and establishment have been prevented? I need not repeat its peculiarities: they have just been referred to. Suppose, then, a century ago, the Legislature had come to be of opinion that it was contrary to public policy that an existing generation should have its hands tied, in dealing with the land of the country, by the necessities, or the personal and family ambitions, or the ideas, of preceding generations; and that public policy required that the land of the country should pass from hand to hand perfectly free, each successive holder having an absolute interest in it; receiving, and transmitting it, quite unencumbered, precisely in the same way as a sovereign passes from hand to hand. And that, therefore, it had been enacted, with the view of securing these conditions, that land should not be charged in any way; that it should not be encumbered with any uses, or settlements of any kind; and that there should be no power of mortgaging it beyond the life, or tenancy, of the mortgagor. Such an enactment, it is obvious, would have rendered the existence of the present system impossible. It would have had this effect, because no one having had the power of encumbering land in favour of his widow and younger children, those whose property was only land, would have been obliged to provide for their widows and younger children by bequeathing to them certain portions of the land itself. This would have subdivided the large estates. It, also, would have secured to every owner the power of at any time selling his land, if for any reason he were desirous of so dealing with it. It is, then, presumably, the permission of the very opposite to that which would have prevented the present state of things from existing, that has given it existence.

We have been speaking of what might have been done. Let us look at something that has been done. The course of recent legislation upon this subject is very instructive; and, as far as it goes, is confirmatory of what we have been saying as to both the cause, and the remedy, of existing evils. We often hear remarks made upon the mischievous consequences of land being held in mortmain. But the fact is, that in this country there is no such thing as land held in mortmain. The Legislature has seen the ill effects of its being so held, and, by a series of Acts, all having the same object, has released what was so held. The estates vested in the Ecclesiastical Commission were made saleable in 1843; the episcopal and capitular estates in 1851; the estates of all other ecclesiastical corporations in 1860; of universities and colleges in 1858. The estates of schools and charities, and of municipal bodies, are now in the same state. By this series of enactments the Legislature has, I believe, completely abolished the holding of land in mortmain. It could not, we may be sure, have done otherwise. There was among all enlightened people an overwhelmingly preponderant perception of what ought to be done; and it was comparatively easy to deal with that portion of the land of the country to which these enactments apply. The ground they took was not that the corporate estates had a worse body of tenants, or were worse cultivated than settled estates, for that was not the case, but that it was an evil that land should not be saleable; and so some, that was not saleable before, was made saleable.