The ancient Allodial Right and the happy social system based upon it, Mr. Laing found jealously guarded by the yeomanry, 'who have not only the legislative power and the election of the Storthing' (or Parliament) 'almost entirely in their own hands, but also the whole civil business of the community.' He may, therefore, well say, without fear of contradiction, that 'the Norwegian people enjoy a greater share of liberty, have the framing and administering of their own laws more entirely in their own hands, than any European nation of the present time;' and, further, that 'it is not a little extraordinary that almost the only result' of the universal delirium of 1790,[9] 'which approaches in reality to the theories of that period, has been the Norwegian Constitution.'
The paramount influence of the agrarian class over the destinies of the kingdom may be judged by the circumstances that the rural districts are permanently represented in the Storthing by two-thirds of the total number of members, limited by the Constitution to 114; and that practically the suffrage is now universal, the principal conditions of its possession being, under recent legislation, a qualification of age (25 years) and a residence of five years in the country. It is well known that the Parliament thus elected (under a system of double election), with its de facto single Chamber, subdivided for the more rapid and effective discharge of certain business into what Mr. Laing chooses to call an 'Upper House' and a 'House of Commons,' has, within very recent days, in virtue of the largely predominant rural, radical vote, exercised its power of impeaching and punishing, by fine and dismissal from office, an entire Cabinet, for the crime of having advised the King that his veto was not merely suspensive, but absolute, in the matter of any Bill affecting the principles of the Constitution, and that the questions in dispute between the Sovereign and the Storthing were of a constitutional character, involving indirectly not only the stability of a monarchical form of government, but also that of the personal union between the crowns of Norway and Sweden—a stability pre-eminently essential in both respects to the highest interests of Scandinavia, and in no small degree also to the maritime and political interests of this country. It is this form of Parliament that Mr. Laing extols 'as a working model of a constitutional government on a small scale, and one which works so well as highly to deserve the consideration of the people of Great Britain.'
We have at last done with Mr. Laing's remarkable statements, views, and recommendations; and the principal question we now have to consider is: What is the latest phase (after an interval of half a century) of the development of the peculiar social organization of Norway, and especially of its system of land tenure, differing, as both do, from the organization and system evolved out of feudality in Great Britain and Ireland? We therefore intend to enquire: (1) Has the system of land tenure in Norway prevented, as foretold by Mr. Laing, an excessive subdivision of land? (2) Has a dead level of ease and contentment been maintained? (3) Has the diffusion of land by a natural process, under the widest form of home rule, kept the rural population of Norway within the bounds of possible modern existence? (4) Has no pauperism affected the taxation of landed property? and (5) generally, Is the Norwegian yeoman farmer in a more thriving condition at the present time than the tenants and agricultural labourers elsewhere, from whom is still withheld the freehold possession of land to which, it is alleged by a certain school of politicians, they have a natural right, disputed only by monopolists and land-grabbers?
These are the questions we shall endeavour to answer with the aid, exclusively, of the latest publications of the Norwegian Government. We must, however, preface our replies by sketching roughly the influences that have sprung into operation since Mr. Laing published the Journal of his residence in Norway.
In his time the towns contained only about eleven per cent. of the total population of the kingdom, whereas at the present moment the proportion is double that of 1835.[10] This urban agglomeration, Dr. Broch shows, has been 'due principally to causes which have operated in the rest of Europe. Facilitated means of communication promoted the migration of the agricultural population towards the towns, where the development of industry and commerce offered the lure of gains or salaries higher than those in rural districts.' One of the causes, he justly adds, of the displacement of the population has been the immense and laudable progress of public instruction, 'and the growing taste for intellectual and material enjoyments which gave a great force of attraction to the towns.'
As in other advancing countries, the attraction of towns, and the facilities for obtaining employment in them, operate also in Norway, to the disadvantage of the yeomen farmers of the present day. Among the causes of the economic decline of the Province of North Bergen, the Prefect mentions that
'the disinclination of young men of the yeoman farmer class to take permanent service is very general in this district, and is easily explained by the ease with which men in the prime of their strength obtain occupation as labourers in the fisheries. The great bulk of the day labourers do not seek with any great eagerness for work in the fields, so long as they hold previously acquired means sufficient to provide them with the necessaries of life, however scantily. As a rule, so long as want does not look in at the window, they will not engage themselves for such work, except at very good wages. The wages for a yearly labourer have doubled during the last twenty years.[11] At the same time the houseman has lost the command he previously had over his workmen, and consequently does not get the same amount of work out of them as formerly. Fishing attracts labour by a larger immediate return, acquired with less bodily exertion than in husbandry. It gives the population less taste for harder work.'
We leave Mr. Laing in doubt whether the steam-engine could 'ever be brought to perfection.' That doubt was speedily removed, and in 1852 Norway followed in the wake of other European nations by building railways, their total length in 1883 having reached very little short of a thousand English miles. Nor did their construction, with capital raised chiefly abroad and punctually repaid, arrest the improvement or the laying down of ordinary roads, to the extent of 4000 miles, between 1845 and 1875. In addition to this extensive opening-out of communication by rail and road, the introduction of steamers on inland waters and their employment as coasters and sea-going vessels, the construction of telegraphs, and development of fisheries, of ship building, of banking and other companies, and generally of trade and industry, produced gradually a wide disturbance in the social economy found by Mr. Laing. The expansion and prosperity of the towns, as well as the more refined habits of life adopted by the clergy and the officials of Government, were viewed by the yeomen farmers with a jealousy that was undoubtedly the original cause of their present radical proclivities, the old conservatism being relegated to towns, contrary to the experience of other European countries, and particularly to that of Great Britain, until the metaphorical three acres and a cow were dangled before the eyes of its rural population.
Under all these influences, and we may include among them the effect of a constantly-increasing number of travellers, equipped with the modern appliances of civilization, and demanding accommodation and other material comforts of a more and more superior character, the Robinson Crusoe existence of the yeoman farmer, as depicted by Mr. Laing, has suffered so much invasion that it has well-nigh disappeared.
In the matter of clothing, an assimilation to general, central European dress has for years past been noticeable even in districts the most remote, to the prejudice of home-spinning and weaving. Ancient silver ornaments have been largely discarded by the women, and converted, first into money, and eventually into articles of modern use or embellishment, to an extent that now renders travellers more and more suspicious of the Brummagem origin of the objects that remain for sale. And it is the same with old furniture and with the multifarious knicknacks which travellers less recent delighted to find in the country at reasonable prices.