A month in Switzerland

by F. Barham Zincke

It will, perhaps, also, be suggested that there may be some mixed method of proceeding, which, while respecting existing arrangements, would, at the same time, largely increase the number of proprietors; as, for instance, to deal with the rents of endowments compulsorily, and with those of the owners of land at their option, just as the tithe was dealt with; that is to say, to convert the rent into a permanent charge upon the land; and then to sell the land, subject to this rent-charge, the yearly value of which would be ascertained, as is done in the case of the tithe commutation rent-charge, by reference to certain averages of the price of the different kinds of grain cultivated in this country. The immediate gain to corporations, and trustees, and to proprietors who might be disposed to sell, would be considerable, for they would continue to get their present rents, without deductions, and would, besides, be able to sell the proprietary right in the land, and its capacity for future increase in value, for whatever they would fetch in the market. This would suit the share-system, for the land might then be bought with or without the rent, as it might happen in each case.

Our opinions on any question are very much influenced by our observation of the direction things are taking. Now, with respect to our existing land-system, all changes in matters connected with, or bearing upon, it, and which appear to be either imminent, or possible, are likely to take only the direction of what will be unfavourable to its maintenance. For instance, if it be decided that endowments, now consisting of land, should be capitalised, in order that more land may be brought into the market, the line of argument, that triumphed against them, will be equally available against our existing land-system. And, furthermore, if the lands belonging to charities, institutions, and corporations be sold, it is evident that, as things now are, they will, for the most part, be bought up by the owners of large contiguous estates; so that, in fact, the remedy attempted will only make the evil it was intended to remedy, more glaring: the great estates will have become greater. The fate of the corporate estates, thus compulsorily sold, will be that of the thousands of small properties the large estates have of late years swallowed up. Everybody knows that many houses of the gentry of former times are now farm-houses on every large estate. It cannot be otherwise, for this is how a large estate is formed. All the smaller estates in the neighbourhood, just like the meteoric bodies which come at last to be overpowered by the attraction of our planet, must, as things are now, gravitate towards it: their end is, sooner or later, generally the former, to fall into it. So, if the estates of the endowments are sold, will it be with them. It has been so with those that have been already sold.

Again, if the Church be disestablished and disendowed, a certain proportion of the rent of each parish in the country, pretty generally more or less increased by private income, will cease to be spent within the parish. What is so spent at present, as far as it goes, and to a great extent in many cases, lessens the hard and repellent features of the absenteeism of the owners of the land in those parishes. Disendowment, therefore, will make the evils and inconveniences of the present system, whatever they may be, more felt, and more conspicuous; and a better mark, as they will then stand clear of all shelter, for adverse comment.

So, too, if the agricultural land of this country should continue, and there is no reason for supposing the contrary, to fall, year by year, into fewer hands, the strength of those who will have to defend the system will be diminishing at the very time that wealth, intelligence, numbers, union, and every element of power, are increasing on the side of those who cannot see that they have any interest in maintaining it.

If the recent Education Act have the intended effect of educating the millions who have no landed property, the most coveted of all human possessions, will they find anything in the existing system that will commend it to their favour? Will they not rather be in favour of a system, which would make every acre of land in the country marketable?

If people should come to think that the reason why France, notwithstanding the abject condition of a large proportion of its peasant-proprietors, and without our stupendous prosperity in manufactures and commerce, has become so rich, is that it keeps its savings at home, because the land of the country is marketable, while we, every year, scatter tens of millions of pounds of our savings all over the earth to be utterly lost, because they cannot be invested at home in the land of the country, the natural reservoir, or savings’ bank, of the surplus capital of a country, as well as the best field for its employment, will they not go on to wish that the land here, too, could be made marketable?

If population and capital go on increasing, may we not anticipate that this will engender a desire—for in these days of railways and telegraphs it is much the same where a man lives—that the agricultural land of the country should be brought into the state of divisibility and marketableness, into which some of the land in the neighbourhood of our great cities has been brought through the pressure of circumstances? This pressure may extend, and be felt with respect to the land of the whole country.

In an era, too, when popular principles so thoroughly pervade society as to influence all our legislation, is it probable that a system which is the reverse of popular will commend itself to general acceptance? It is also on the cards now that manual labour may become so costly as to necessitate, if a great deal of land is not to go out of cultivation, the substitution of machinery to such an extent as will be done, generally, only by those who own the land.

The whole stream of tendency, then, both in what is now occurring, and in what is likely to occur in no remote future, seems setting strongly in a direction which cannot be regarded as favourable to the maintenance of our present land-system. And the observation of this will, sooner or later, consciously or unconsciously, very much modify opinion on the subject; for in human affairs, just as with respect to the operations of Nature, we are disposed to acquiesce in what we have come to understand is inevitable.

But we have for some time lost sight of the Valley of the Visp, though not of its imaginary sole Proprietor. He has all along been before us. What we have been considering was how, in this era of capital, he came to be its sole proprietor, what are the action and effects of those artificial conditions which placed him in this position, and what are the chances of the maintenance of these artificial conditions.