gave notice that on Thursday next he would ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department by whose orders a peaceful procession of persons carrying a Petition to that House against a financial proposal of the Government had been broken up and their banners destroyed or taken from them.

Sir, I think it is desirable that an answer should be given at once to a Question of this kind; and as my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State is not present, which I regret, yet, as he consulted me on the subject, I have no hesitation in answering the hon. Baronet's Question. The House is aware that it is not permitted in this country for bodies of persons petitioning Parliament in large numbers to convey their Petition to the Houses of Parliament. Having been given to understand that a great assemblage was to meet for the purpose of bringing corporeally a Petition to the House, we deemed that this was a resolution rather suddenly adopted and communicated; but, being made known to us yesterday morning, we determined that the best course which could be taken was immediately to send a friendly warning to the people on the spot where they were to gather; because we thought the resolution had been come to in ignorance of the law, and not with any evil intention whatever, or the slightest disposition to do anything discreditable to themselves. Instructions consequently were given to the police to convey that information to the parties. With regard to what followed I have no distinct information. I am not aware that any circumstances at all serious or extraordinary occurred.

I shall feel obliged to the right hon. Gentleman to state to the House what is the law of public processions. The right hon. Gentleman must be aware that on Sunday some of the streets of the metropolis were blocked by—["Order, order!"]

A question of that kind cannot be asked without notice. I only took the opportunity of answering the Question of the hon. Member for Chelsea immediately, because I was desirous of removing at once any impression that there was any disposition on the part of the people yesterday to break the law.

asked the Postmaster General, Whether the telegraphic communication so long promised between Bridgwater and Cannington and Stogursey will be soon completed?

, in reply, said, the telegraphic communication in question would, he hoped, be opened in the month of August.

asked the First Lord of the Treasury, with reference to a statement made by him that the phrase "Political Plea" was not known at the India Office, Whether his attention has been drawn to the case of the Soosung Rajah of Bengal, who having in 1856 been deprived by the Indian Government of part of his possessions, by an inaccurate line of survey, instituted a suit against the Government, and after three successive judgments given in his favour, the last by a full Bench of the High Court of Calcutta, the Government lodged an appeal to the Judicial Committee of Privy Council on the 17th of August 1868; nevertheless they took the step, while that appeal was still pending, and in which they were defendants, of introducing a Bill in the Legislative Council of India to remove the lands in question altogether from the estate of the Soosung Rajah, thus rendering the judgments given in the Rajah's favour null and void, and depriving him of the property he had acquired under them, the reason assigned being "Political Necessity;" and, whether he will grant a Committee to investigate the question of the administration of justice, or bring in a Bill for the better administration of justice in regard to that portion of Her Majesty's Indian subjects who are exposed to such rules of procedure?

, in reply, said, the hon. and gallant Gentleman had taken great pains to state his question with great particularity, but he doubted whether the House would follow a detailed answer if he went into the case at large. It was needless to do so, because the question of the hon. and gallant Gentleman was summed up by the closing words. On the question itself, his attention had been called to the subject. The hon. and gallant General appeared to him to overlook the distinction between that to which he had originally referred in the discussion of this subject—namely, the use by the Executive Government of the "Political Plea" in the Courts of Law as a means of anticipating the operation of law on behalf of those with whom they might be in litigation—and the founding of legislative measures on political expediency. The case to which he had referred was evidently not of Executive but of legislative procedure. With regard to the other part of the Question, as to the appointment of a Committee, he might say it had not been in his power to procure adequate information from the Indian Department since notice of this Question had been given; but he had made it known to the Secretary of State for India, and would inform the hon. and gallant Gentleman of the conclusion he had arrived at.

asked Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer, Whether he is aware that the retirements of the Officers of the Indian Army, although less than two-thirds of the number of the Officers of the Royal Army, costs no less than £880,000 a year, according to the report in "The Times," of General Norman's financial statement?

Sir, the hon. and gallant Gentleman seems to be in error as to the duty of the Chancellor of the Exchequer in this matter of importance. It is not a departmental question, to be dealt with by him, but it is one to be dealt with by the whole Government. I have sanctioned this expenditure in no other sense than my colleagues sanctioned it when it was brought before them. I had, however, asked my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for War for information on the subject, and he gave me just the information he gave to the House—that is, that it was vain to ask him, because data did not exist on which calculations could be based. As to the statement in The Times, I am not aware whether it is correct or not, and I am not aware that it is my duty to be aware.

I asked Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer because it is impossible to get any information from the Secretary of State for War.

asked the First Commissioner of Works, Whether his attention has been called to the offensive effluvium arising from the exposed mud in the basin of the ornamental water in Saint James's Park; why so unusual a season of the year has been selected for cleansing the basin; and, whether he will take steps to expedite the work with a view to the readmission of the water as soon as possible?

said, in reply, that he had been to the Park that day, but he could not discover the offensive effluvium, probably because the precaution had been taken to cover the mud with lime as soon as it was discovered to be necessary, so that no great inconvenience had been suffered, and of course the mud would be cleared away as soon as possible. The reason why the work was being done now was that it could not be commenced until it was certain that frost would not return. The work would be carried on as rapidly as circumstances would permit.

asked the Secretary of State for War, Whether the Colonels of Artillery to be appointed to districts, in connection with the new Reserve Organization, are to have Adjutants; and, if so, from what rank such Adjutants are to be selected?

Sir, it will be unnecessary to make new appointments of the character referred to in the hon. and gallant Officer's Question, as the permanent staff of the Reserve forces is already very numerous, and will probably supply any required assistance to the colonels who will be appointed to districts. It is eventually intended that the adjutants of the Reserve artillery should be taken from the officers of the Royal Artillery.

asked the Chief Secretary for Ireland, If he has ascertained whether there is any Act of Parliament still in force under which aid could be given for the promotion of the Irish Sea Fisheries; and, if not, whether it is his intention to introduce a measure to carry into effect the Recommendations of the Commissions of 1835 and 1870, of the Select Committees of the House of Commons of 1849 and 1867, and of the Inspectors of Fisheries in their Report for 1869 in favour of the above object?

said, in reply, that he had consulted the Law Officers of the Crown, and had ascertained that there was no Act of Parliament in force under which assistance could be given; and, under these circumstances, it had been referred to the Inspector of Fisheries to consider whether any, and, if any, what assistance could judiciously be given.

rose to call the attention of the House to the injurious effect of the existing practice of land settlement and entail in diminishing the permanent investment of capital in the soil and obstructing the freedom of the land market, and to move—

"That, in the opinion of this House, the present Law of Land Settlement is opposed to public policy, by diminishing the investment of capital in the soil and preventing the freedom of sale and purchase."

The hon. and learned Gentleman said, the subject was one of increasing importance, and his apology for introducing it was that circumstances had made him specially familiar with it. It was one also of a very mixed character, partaking almost equally of law, of political economy, and, he might add, of agriculture. In dealing with the subject he did not at all propose to treat it as a political ques- tion; it did not appear to him to be essentially a party question; it appeared rather to belong to those sciences which required in some degree calmness and caution in their study, and it was from that point of view he ventured to bring it before the House. He should be obliged to trespass upon the patience and probably to run counter to the prejudices of many hon. Members, and, therefore, he would bespeak that consideration which the House always gave to those who did not frequently address it. Fortunately, he was able to begin with a view of the case about which there was little difference of opinion—that was, the extraordinary difficulty and uncertainty in the transfer of land; and the expense and difficulty of the transfer of land had the effect of diminishing the purchase of land by the middle and poorer classes of the country, and of placing those who purchased on a large scale in a position of peculiar advantage. It was now nearly 40 years ago since an Act was passed to make titles indefeasible after a possession of 20 years, and there was still the same difficulty in dealing with titles, the same necessity for going back 60 years in order to obtain a title; and during the 40 years we had had Commissions, Committees, and Blue Books without number. The last attempt at legislation on this subject was made by Lord Chancellor Westbury, who passed a Bill for the establishment of a registry; but that measure did not produce any satisfactory results. The Commissioners stated that no fewer than 20 Bills had been introduced into Parliament in as many years to simplify the transfer of land, but not one of them had succeeded. What was the difficulty which stood in the way of these efforts? He believed the fact was that English estates were not capable of easy transfer, as, in consequence of the length of the settlements and the entails, it was not possible to bring them within such a compass that they could be safely put on a register. This, he thought, was the cause of the ill success of Lord Westbury's measure, and he was justified in that conclusion by the opinions of two of the witnesses examined by the Commission, Mr. Christie and Mr. Bellenden Kerr; and, indeed, the Commissioners themselves in their Report stated their opinion that it was impossible to discuss any system for the more ready transfer of land without feeling that an impediment was caused by entails and settlements. This difficulty had been previously pointed out by Lord John Russell, who, at the meeting of the Social Science Association at Liverpool, in 1858, spoke of the mass of technical difficulties in which our law of real property wasinvolved—he said that it was the most abstruse branch of English jurisprudence, and that, under the civil law, the regulations concerning the transmission of real estate were neither numerous nor difficult to understand. The noble Lord added that in the State of New York, it was the law that no settlement or entail should extend beyond the lives of two persons living at the time of the creation of the estate. It must be clear to anyone who had studied this question that the difficulty of transfer arising from the necessity of going back to establish and investigate titles must be correlative to the power assumed by our landowners to charge their estates and subject them to settlements for a long period. Now, what was the origin of the modern settlement which extended to unborn lives? Nothing of the kind existed in the Roman civil law or in the Anglo-Saxon laws, nor was there anything like it in the feudal system under the two great laws "Quia emptores" and "De Donis." The ordinary family settlement dated from a far later period, as was clearly shown in a paper read before the Juridicial Society. No instance of anything like it was found prior to the 3rd and 4th of Philip and Mary; but it was brought into general use at the time of the Usurpation in order to provide against forfeiture for treason. The period when it originated was very different from the present. Lord Macaulay informed us that in the middle of the 17th century the arable and pasture lands in England were not supposed to amount to much more than half the area of the kingdom, the remainder being moor, forest, and fen; while the population at that period was only estimated at 5,500,000. Again, those who occupied their own lands were more numerous than those who farmed the lands of others. Large tracts of land were uninclosed; and even at Enfield, now within the smoke of the metropolis, there were only three houses in a circuit of 25 miles, and scarcely any inclosed fields. It appeared that since that time the number of landowners had considerably diminished: the last Return gave the number at 30,700. It was difficult to believe that the number was so small, and he regretted that they did not possess any trustworthy statistics on the subject. He did not know why this should be, for he could not think that there was anything in the question which called for concealment. There had been a tendency in every stage of the world's history for land to aggregate into a few hands. In the Greek States every addition to the population occasioned great dissatisfaction on account of the deficiency of public lands; in Rome the same cause led to the agrarian controversies described by Niebuhr and Dr. Arnold, and an eminent writer had expressed the opinion that our own Saxon ancestors would not have been subdued so completely as they were at the Battle of Hastings but for the dissatisfaction existing in the minds of the people in consequence of the estates of the smaller landowners being systematically absorbed into the manors of the larger proprietors. It was the natural tendency of land to accumulate into large holdings; but he thought it a grave defect that the law should tend to promote this aggregation. In France the law of amorcellement was enacted with the avowed object of destroying the aristocracy; but according to the testimony of M. Lavaleye its effect had rather been to destroy the population. The law of England professed to abhor perpetuities, but allowed the existence of that species of private entail the effect of which was to multiply perpetuities, and so increase the great evil he wished to see remedied. He did not think that, so far as the cultivation of land was concerned, there was much to complain of in this country, because on farms of great extent it was not only possible but profitable to use costly implements. When a landowner found himself in the possession of a very large estate he wished to diminish his trouble as much as possible, and therefore he sought to get rid of his smaller farms. As to the question of large and small farms, there was no necessity for comparison between them, and there was no competition between them. From late Returns it appeared that farms below 20 acres in extent amounted to nearly one-half of the holdings of the kingdom. What he wanted to see was not so much an increase in either category as a better distribution of the land, to be brought about by affording greater facilities than now exist for purchasing land in medium and small quantities. They were told that not very long ago the yeomanry of England were so numerous that they exceeded the farmers in number. This body of yeomanry was a most valuable class. They were extremely independent, and they formed a medium between the great landowners and the small ones. Various recondite reasons were assigned for their decline, which was, in his opinion, due simply to the uncertainty and the enormous cost and delay attending the transfer of land. If this, which might be called the merely mechanical part of the English land question, were put on a proper footing, he felt convinced that a great and salutary change would speedily follow. In every European country, even including Russia and Austria, the ownership of land had now been rendered as simple and easy as possible, and what he desired was that England should imitate the good example set her. It had been said that England was so limited in acreage and so wealthy that the land ought to be looked upon as the playground of the rich rather than as a mere subject of sale and purchase; but what he wanted was that the privilege should be extended to all classes, for there was no earthly reason why the comparatively poor man should not invest in land according to his means just as the rich man did. There was a prejudice and almost a vulgarism, which existed among us, that nothing could be done that was not conducted upon a large scale. It was said that poor men could not afford to compete for the purchase of land with men so rich that they could afford to hold estates which did not yield a return of more than 2½ per cent upon the capital invested. But there could be no reason why land, if easily transferable, should not be as eagerly sought after by small proprietors in England as it was upon the Continent. There was, he thought, a point at which the State ought to step in and say to the owners of land—"Thus far shalt thou go and no further." It appeared to be a natural thing that a man's power over land should end with the lives of those in being at the time of the disposition of his property; but by the law of entail as it now existed in this country a man was able to settle his land for any number of lives in being and for 21 years afterwards. How, he would ask, could it be right for a man to be able to control the disposition of his land for 21 years after the death of those in being? In other countries the transfer of land had been very much simplified, with the happiest results as far as the welfare of the poorer classes was concerned. There was in this country the greatest mass of wealth, and, side by side, the greatest mass of pauperism—indeed, such a mass of pauperism as compelled us to admit the lamentable fact that out of every 20 Englishmen born there was one pauper. How was it that those two extreme classes could not co-operate together so as to mitigate those evils of which we all complained? The reason was to be found in our land system, which gave to the one class a vast monopoly of ownership, whilst it deprived the other of the means of becoming owners of such land. Our political economists, from Adam Smith downwards, had told us that the distribution of wealth was far more important than its aggregation, and of all forms of wealth the distribution of land was, perhaps, the most important. If we could only consent to abandon the fag-end of the right of settlement, and bar that portion of the entail which was included in the 21 years after the death of living representatives, we should then, he believe, be able to have an effective register such as that used in other countries where rights like those conferred upon landed proprietors by the law of entail had been abolished. The effect would probably be to remove the slur which now rested upon the country, as possessing laws which divorced the tiller from the soil. He was satisfied that we should never find a solution of the trouble among our poorer classes; that we should never get rid of the dissoluteness of life and the want of better education which now existed; until we had accomplished some such reform as this. The hon. and learned Member concluded by moving his Resolution.

said, he rose to second the Motion of his hon. Friend, and he did so with much pleasure for he was sure they would all agree that they had just listened to a very interesting speech, whether they agreed or not with all the conclusions. For his part, he agreed with all his hon. Friend had said—he even went further than he did; but he would not dwell on that. He wished to confirm his statements by some considerations which had occurred to his own mind. In the outset he wished to say that he had no sympathy with the views of some reformers whose programme had lately been sent forth backed by names of high repute. They desired to take from the landlord part of the increase in the value of the soil. He (Mr. W. Fowler) believed that such a policy would be most disastrous, for it would tend to take away from the landlord the incentive to improve his estate, for he would not do that, if he could not be sure of retaining the results of his labours. The object of land laws, in his opinion, should be not merely to obtain a happy, but also a productive population, so as to secure as much produce as possible from the soil. Hardly any country was so dependent on foreign nations for her supply of food as England, and therefore the question of the production of food at home was one of the utmost importance. He doubted whether, even in that House, the effects of the application of capital to the soil were fully appreciated. Without capital the land was impotent. He could give instances ad nauseam of the results which had followed from the application of capital, but he would content himself with two, which he took from The Times of November 11th, 1870, and The Mark Lane Express of October 10th, 1870. In the former paper, Mr. Prout's case was fully described. In 1861 he purchased 450 acres for £15,750. In four years he spent £3,800 in draining and improving, and last year, after spending £3,450, his crops were sold for £5,330, leaving a profit to the tenant of £1,880. The average outlay was £3,450, including £2 an acre for rent, and 10s. per acre for other charges, as rates, &c., and the average return for four years was £4,600, leaving a tenant's profit of £1,150. The other case was that of Mr. Ruck, at Braydon, in Wiltshire—

"When Mr. Ruck took this farm in hand, in 1862, the rent was £165 per annum, for the 300 acres (11s. per acre), and he bought it for £4,000, or £13 6s. 8d. an acre. He sold off £600 worth of timber, got rid of the rough gorse and wide spreading hedges, levelled the ditches, and properly drained the land; and he has lately been offered £600, or £2 per acre, rent."

It was needless to say more on this head. Now, if capital was to be applied, that could be done in one of two ways— either by a man buying the labour and materials of others and using them on a farm, or by a man using his own labour in cultivation. These cases answered to the cases of large and small farms and large and small holdings, about the merits and demerits of which so much was heard. This controversy was quite beside the point he wished to lay before the House. It has been proved by M. de Laveleye and many others that small holdings and small farms answered well in Belgium and various other parts of the Continent. That system had turned Flanders from a sandhill into a garden, and this case alone was enough to prove the success of small holdings even where some of the holders were merely tenants. It was well known that here in England large farms were very successful. We have many small holdings in this country, but his hon. Friend (Mr. Wren-Hoskyns) did not ask for any change in the law which would compel men to break up their farms. He only asked that the law should accord with nature more closely than it now did, and should interfere less than now with the distribution of land. He knew some would say—"Why ask for any change, for surely England is well cultivated, and that is all you require?" To that he (Mr. W. Fowler) replied that England was not well cultivated, speaking of it as a whole. It was the opinion of a man better qualified to speak on the subject than any other in England that they might obtain one-third more produce from the land if the cultivation were what it ought to be. Now the demand for land was great, the price was high, and the competition for farms was great; how was it, then, that sufficient capital was not applied in cultivation? He believed there were two reasons—first, that the land was tied up by settlements in the hands of impoverished owners; and, secondly, that sufficient security was not given to the farmer for the return of the capital invested by him in cultivation. The very object of a strict settlement was to prevent land being sold by an impoverished owner; so that, no matter how poor a man might have become, the land should not be sold so as to pass out of the hands of the family. But he (Mr. W. Fowler) thought that such a man should sell his land, and that if he did not, the natural flow of capital to the land was checked. Take, for instance, the case of a noble Duke, whose name recently appeared in The Gazette. How much capital would be expended on his land during the remainder of his life? His estates were held by him for life; but if he held the fee-simple—as under a natural system of law he would do—the land would have been sold, the creditors would have been paid, and capitalists would come in and work the land with advantage to the whole community. This was no fancy of his (Mr. W. Fowler's). Mr. Caird, in a very interesting work written in 1851, descriptive of an agricultural tour throughout England, pointed out distinctly that wherever he found an estate more than usually neglected the cause assigned was the inability of the owner to make improvements owing to encumbrances. No one would dispute that a very large part of the whole area of England was held by life-owners; and to this system he objected, because the life-owner had neither the motive nor the power to spend money. In most cases, he had not the power, as was seen from the laws which had been passed to enable him to borrow money for the purpose of making improvements. Why should this favour be shown to the owner of land? Other owners were not so treated. No Acts were passed to aid them. They had to raise money as well as they could, without assistance from the State. The fact was, that the law, having locked the land up was compelled to counteract the mischief by lending money to the limited owner. What he (Mr. W. Fowler) said was that we should have owners in fee who could take care of themselves. But further, the life-owner had not the motive for spending. Such, an owner was rather a manager for the family than owner, and however well-disposed he might be, he was afraid to spend money in improvements, such as cottages, &c, because, by so doing, he would be merely increasing the share of the heir, which was very often far too large already; so, common fairness to his younger children almost compelled him to stay his hand. He had to save for them rather than to lay out money. By this system they were embarrassed with that "double ownership" which the statesmen of Prussia had at the cost of so much labour abolished, and that with results which almost exceeded belief. But his objections did not end here. He said that the difficulty and cost of the conveyance of land were mainly due to this system of settlements. What made the Courts demand so long a title? Nothing but the fact that owners had, by law, the power of making such long settlements. The Court was naturally afraid of dormant settlements by will or deed—and no one could wonder at it. He had been told that it was very common to have to pay a year's rent as the cost of a purchase of land. He asked hon. Gentlemen how long they would endure this burden? This was the opinion of Mr. Caird as to what the effect of greater simplicity would be—

"We see no reason to doubt that, if the transfer of land were simplified, its value might be increased by five years' purchase; for persons seeking investment would look not merely to an immediate return, but to the certainty of a prospective increase of value which land in this country affords. A rise in value to this extent would free many an embarrassed landlord from his difficulties, and would, at all events, enable him to borrow money for the improvement of his estate on more reasonable terms."

They had had plenty of Registration Acts, but they had been failures because they had registered titles, and had not enabled an owner to transfer the fee-simple without reference to trusts and charges. Why should there be so much nervousness about a change of the law? At the Bank of England, stock was transferred without any questions being asked as to the trusts on which it was held, and he wanted to know why there should be different proceedings with respect to transfer of land. All over the Continent, and even in our own Colonies, land could be transferred as easily as stock; but he feared they would never effect this in our own country until the settlement of land was forbidden. This was a question which affected borrowers as well as sellers. Mr. Caird had well remarked that on the Continent, land was a favourite security for loans; but here, unless a man could afford to pay heavy costs, he could only raise money on land with difficulty and at high interest. A large owner might raise money at a moderate cost, in proportion to his large wants, but a small owner could not do so. There was another objection, which he took to our system—that it tended to a forced accumulation of land in few hands, so that the number of owners was much reduced from that which it would naturally be, and he regarded this as a serious social danger. One of the ablest economists in Europe, M. de Laveleye, concurred in this view, and in an essay recently written, urged it on the attention of Englishmen as one of our gravest social defects. We were so accustomed to see good order prevail, and to expect our people always to behave with respect for the laws, that we ignored these things; but the day might come when we might regret that we had not a larger body of owners of land interested in the good order of the state, and the due observance of the laws. Another consequence of this law was that the possession of land was regarded as a luxury, and as a source of power rather than as an investment. When a man bought an estate, he was apt to inquire what votes and what influence he would obtain by the purchase, and not so much to consider other points of far more real importance. So an enormous price was given for land, and thus men of moderate means were hindered from buying, though they were often found to be most capable and excellent owners. He wished now to refer to a social consequence of these laws which had been too little considered. The fact that young men knew they were heirs to great estates very often led them into extravagance not merely in itself, but because they fell into the hands of money-lenders, who knew their position and tempted them. He was told the other day by a noble Lord of the case of a young man who had borrowed £650,000 during his father's life, and was now living on an allowance from his creditors. Had the father been able to give his estate to whom he pleased, most probably the young man would have been saved. Such men when they came into their property, could do it no justice. He had only one point more to mention under this head. He referred to the effects of the laws in discouraging the building of cottages and depressing the wages of the labourer. The less capital was spent, the less money would there be as a wage-fund for the labourer. This was clear in theory, and well-known to be a fact. The evidence as to the state of cottages was appalling. [The hon. Member read two extracts from the Appendix to the first Report of the Commissioners appointed to inquire into the condition of women and children employed in agriculture—the first being the evidence of the present Bishop of Manchester, and the other that of Mr. George Culley, an Assistant Commissioner—describing the dreadful condition of the cottages in the agricultural parishes tying within their districts.] He thought, then, that a case had been made out deserving the consideration of the House, and he should like to have an answer to the question—Why England alone clung to this antiquated system? Before concluding, he should like for a moment to refer to the condition of the occupier of land. He believed that in no country in Europe had he so little security for the return of the capital invested by him in cultivation. He knew that many landlords were very lenient, and allowed their tenants to retain their land at very low rents. But this was a bad system. The tenant from year to year at a low rent had no security, and was often a bad farmer. Mr. Caird instanced the case of a great estate in the North of England where the tenants paid low rents, and were never disturbed, and yet the land was in a bad condition, and the tenants were not satisfied. Now, in Flanders, on the contrary, they had a system by which the out-going tenant was always paid for his improvements by the in-coming tenant on a valuation, and the plan was said to answer well. M. de Laveleye says of it—

"In Flanders all agricultural authorities agree that the Pachter's Regt is indispensable to good culture. … The land in Flanders is so poor that if the out-going tenant neglects it during the last two years of his occupation, the farm is ruined."

He knew that landlords objected to this system, and that Mr. Caird says it does not answer in those counties where a similar custom exists; but he (Mr. W. Fowler) knew also that some of the best farmers had quite a contrary opinion, and he thought it was a subject which well deserved the attention of this House. He repeated that they asked for no revolutionary change. He did not want to interfere with the rights of any man—all he asked was that we should be less anxious about the future generation, and should have the courage to trust our children, as our fathers might had trusted us. He asked for a natural law, which should not interfere with that dispersion and that accumulation of property, which the ordinary course of events was sure to bring about. And even if such a change should cause the ruin of some families, whose members have distinguished themselves for extravagance and folly, such a result would be far better than that the law should remain in an unsound and unnatural condition. They need not fear the influx of men who had made their fortunes elsewhere. No estates were better managed than those which had been bought by men who had made their fortunes in trade. Take the case of an estate in Sussex, bought in 1810 for £60,000, and duly settled and neglected till 1850, when it was bought by Sir Charles Lampson, who had improved it, and recently received an offer of £75,000 for it. Sometimes they were told that the Peerage would be endangered by any such change, as we might have Peers without estates. They had seen that phenomenon already, and it was very clear that if Peers with all their advantages of position and education could not take care of their own property, they were unfit to review the decisions of this House. He asked for nothing but a more natural law, and he made this request with confidence; and therefore with much pleasure seconded the Motion.

said, that if he needed any reason for not supporting the Motion before the House, he would be able to find it in the marked difference of the tone and line of argument adopted by the hon. Member for Cambridge (Mr. W. Fowler) compared with those which had marked the speech of the hon. and learned Gentleman who made the Motion before the House. The speech of the hon. and learned Mover was studiously cautious and moderate in its political dogmata, but the speech of the hon. Member for Cambridge might be described as one general indictment against the landed proprietors of England. The hon. and learned Mover's statements, indeed, impressed him with the idea that the Motion went too far, because the grievance he set up in his speech was so moderate that in the end there appeared to be no grievance at all. On the other hand, the speech of the hon. Gentleman the Member for Cambridge was a general indictment of the whole class of landed proprietors throughout the country, charging them with neglect of their duties, and almost of a forgetfulness of their Christian obligations, and closing with the assertion that the tenant's position was less fixed, less certain, and less valuable than in any other country in the world. He was himself for free trade in land within due limits by the alternative permission either of a tenancy-at-will, or of a lease, according to the respective circumstances of the different estates, and the means of the landlords and tenants; and as the choice could be freely offered under existing circumstances, he asked where were the grounds for an alteration of the present law? To carry out the views urged by the hon. Member for Cambridge, they would have not only to abolish the rule of primogeniture, but to make land a mere commodity of profit, dissevered from social and residential influences. If the present Motion was to be a first step in that direction, he should certainly give it his unqualified opposition. They had been told by the hon. and learned Mover that nothing was wanted but an alteration of the law of settlement to cheapen land in the market; but, after such a change had been made, if they accepted the views of the hon. Member for Cambridge, this cheapening of land would not be for the benefit of the poor, but for the advantage of the newly rich. The abolition of the 21 years over was all that the hon. and learned Mover of the Motion asked for upon the assertion that it would develop the land market; but he did not think the poor cottier would be the person benefited by any such accelerated change of ownership, because his would not be the hands into which the soil would pass. The prosperous capitalist would buy it, and he would be a personage with no greater abstract motive to care for the poor man than his predecessor, and with none of the traditionary kindness which bound together the old master and his dependents. The ancient squire would simply be replaced by the rich speculator. The hon. and learned Mover and Seconder ought first to agree as to the argument they should advance before asking the House to assent to the Motion. He had stated the moderate, though, he believed, mistaken proposition of the hon. and learned Mover. The argument of the Seconder wandered into the charge of breach of moral obligation against the landowners with respect to their cottages. This argument touching cottages was an ad captandum one, and such being its character it was the argument which was likely to have the most weight out-of-doors. But it really answered the hon. and learned Mover's proposition. To make land a mere crop and beast producing thing would be to introduce a very hard and grinding state of things for the labourer. It was the simple conclusion of common sense that the man who had the most money was the most likely to provide good cottages. When a man must live by his land, "live" came first with him, and "let live" came second. England being a comparatively small country, with but little unoccupied land, the question of labourers' cottages could only be solved by leaving on the land a residential body who would be bound to the soil by considerations other than mere financial profit—which profit alone could dominate the considerations of the struggling owner of that scrap of soil which was his all-in-all. A landowner lived under the stress of public opinion; perhaps he desired a seat in this House; he feared the gossip of society, and had every inducement in the world not to be written off as a hard, grinding skinflint. Now, a farmer might have the same wishes, but what made the squire a skinflint was only natural, and, perhaps, necessary on the part of an impecunious man. Communism was what some hon. Gentlemen were really driving at, perhaps unconsciously. Let every man have a bit of land, they said; let him have a good cottage; let there be a Minister of Public Dwellings, and then the poor man will live and lodge luxuriously. A bright dream this, no doubt; but in an old and small country like ours, with no immeasurable extent of unoccupied land and uncut building material, this question of labourers' cottages could only be solved, short of the intervention of the State, by encouraging a residential class of proprietors who had money to spend, and did not invest it in land merely for the percentage they could get out of it. Who are the men who have led the movement for cottage improvement? He answered, the gentry and nobility of England. One member of the highest peerage, the Duke of Bedford, stood for- ward prominently among the improvers of cottages. The late Prince Consort, who made himself an English country gentleman, was also a leading cottage improver. Who had been at the head of all societies formed for the same object? Persons with land, who had brains and capital behind the land. He was indignant at the reproach that had been cast upon landed proprietors, as though they had neglected their duties in this respect. By abolishing entails and settlements the trade in land might be increased, though he did not believe it would, but if it were, and if land got into the hands of people whose wish was to produce a balance-sheet which would look well in a statistical journal, the happiness of the labourer would sensibly diminish. Altering and building on your estate was a pleasurable employment; but as a matter of profit, he could say from much personal experience, give him any other investment and any occupation—even law stationery—rather than cottage-building or alteration if done with a benevolent regard for the comfort of cottagers. The hon. and learned Mover somewhat invidiously called the land the playground of the rich, meaning that rich men bought land not simply to get a productive return, but for the pleasurable occupations and duties, the modus vivendi in short, derived from its possession. Well, this highly developed taste for country life had both the commercial advantage of keeping in England a capital which might otherwise be embarked in foreign speculations, and it also insured in the country a residential class of persons who had something else to fall back upon besides their land, and whose residence, with all its incidental expenditure, was a great advantage to the people in the locality. The hon. and learned Member for Hereford asked for more free trade in land, so that a greater number of men in comparatively easy circumstances might invest in it and occupy it for their own comfort than there were at present. [Mr. WREN-HOSKYNS: Hear, hear!] He was glad the hon. and learned Member heard him, and that the controversy between them was reduced to that narrow limit. He was now bound to point out that the hon. and learned Gentleman appeared to have forgotten one important fact—namely, that the allowable pride of founding a family underlies the desire of most men to invest in land, instead of making their investments more profitably in other undertakings. That feeling—and it was a laudable and useful one within right limits—was met and yet not unduly nursed, by the present law of entail; for the power of cutting off entails was sufficiently provided, while no such moderate alteration, such as that proposed by the hon. and learned Member opposite, would be sufficient to accomplish the root and branch alterations advocated by his Seconder. Balancing the probabilities of the scheme proposed by the hon. and learned Member for Hereford, it appeared to him that the inconvenience of disturbing a state of things which had not worked ill would exceed the advantages, apart from the prospective evils that lay beyond the first scope of the scheme. The change which the hon. Member proposed would materially interfere with the residential sentiment, and increase the tendency—which he should be sorry to see increased—to invest money in personal securities which carried with them no personal responsibilities. Even if he were for a moment induced to look with complacency upon the change proposed by the hon. and learned Member for Hereford, he would at once be confronted by the hon. Member for Cambridge, who said that his Friend had not gone far enough, and who brought a broad and revolutionary indictment against the landed interest of England. His objections to the Motion were manifold; but, above all, he protested most strenuously against the doctrine which lay under the argument of the hon. Member for Cambridge. On these grounds he opposed the Motion, and hoped the House would not assent to it.

said, he wished to recall the attention of the House to the words of the Motion, rather than, in imitation of the very entertaining speeches they had listened to, adopt the discursive mode of treatment which had been pursued for the last hour and a-half. Was it true that the existing law of settlement and entail did diminish the permanent investment of capital in the soil, and obstruct the freedom of the land market? He was by no means prepared to admit the truth of those propositions. The Mover and Seconder of the Resolution had said that we did not get permanent investments of capital in the soil. But why did we not? Not, I as was asserted, on account of the system of land settlement, but because the owners of land in this country, for reasons not at all unknown, were unwilling to grant long leases to their tenants. Hon. Gentlemen all knew that every tenant-for-life had a right to grant a lease for 21 years; he was not prevented from doing so by the law of settlement but by his own will, and if he were made owner-in-fee to-morrow that would not alter his disinclination to grant long leases. When tenants-for-life were convinced that it was desirable to abolish the game laws and to give up their political influence, then they might be persuaded that it was for their interest to grant long leases; but they did not choose to do so now, because they liked to enjoy their own property in their own way, and preferred this to the benefit which would accrue to them from an increased amount of rent. That, he believed, was the true answer to these objections made to the law of settlement. As to other objections, it had been said that cottages would be built were it not for settlements; but everyone who had any knowledge of the subject would agree with the hon. Member for Cambridge University (Mr. B. Hope) that a more unprofitable investment in a pecuniary point of view there could not be. He did not think it was true that better cottages were built on the estates of the owners-in-fee than of the tenants-for-life, for was it not rather the truth that where the owner, whether tenant-for-life or in fee, was a rich man, there good cottages were to be found; where he was not rich, they were not? There was really no connection between the law of settlement and the building of cottages. Then it was said that the law of settlement and entail obstructed the freedom of the land market. Now, he had had a quarter of a century's experience of the working of this law, and his experience was that in every well-drawn settlement a power of sale was given to trustees at the request of the tenant-for-life. Then, why did he not sell? Simply because he did not choose. Because he wished to retain the estate for himself, and have it descend to his son, his grandson, and his great grandson; and, therefore, if he were made a tenant-in-fee to-morrow, he would not sell. A great proportion of landowners had, either by purchase or otherwise, obtained no inconsiderable properties which were at their absolute disposal. Well, how did they dispose of those properties? With the most anxious desire to tie them up as long as possible. In giving instructions for their wills to their solicitors or conveyancers, it was always with an injunction to keep the properties in the family to the utmost, and if the owner of such a property prized it more than another it was because he could keep it in the family for one generation longer. There was no greater addition to the value of a landed estate in the mind of the proprietor than the sentiment, the feeling, the idea that he could by way of settlement secure it to his descendants. He utterly denied that by abolishing this law we should increase the value of estates; and he was further of opinion that instead of giving increased freedom in the disposal of land, the proposal would have quite an opposite result. The great attraction of every wealthy manufacturer or trader, or successful lawyer, was that he could buy a large estate and found a family which would transmit his name to remote generations. We could not change the nature of a society, or the feelings of an old and long-established country like this, and must legislate for the wants of the community as we found it. It had been said that the law of settlement made a man a mere agent or manager of an estate, not the owner. But that was not true. Did we not see rich tenants-for-life pulling down old mansions and rebuilding them at an enormous expense out of their own pockets, and laying out vast sums on the improvement and embellishment of their estates? Why did they do so? Because they felt that they were the owners, and not merely agents or managers for their eldest sons. This was a question of sentiment and not merely of law. Then, again, they were told that the law of settlement prevented the transfer of land. It did not; but, to a certain extent, it increased the cost of transfer, and with great deference to his hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Mr. Fowler) he said it was not true that the costs of transfer were anything like one year's rental of the estate, for take away the stamp duties, which were of course a percentage payable to the Government, and the costs of transfer were almost a fixed quantity. They had no relation whatever to the value of the estate; and they depended a great deal upon the way in which the parts of the estate had been got together. If you had an estate which had been formed by the acquisition of a large number of small properties, the showing of the title to them would very much increase the cost of transfer of the estate; but in ordinary cases it did not matter whether the estate was worth £10,000 or £100,000; irrespective of the stamps, the cost of transfer would be exactly the same. And more than that, inasmuch as great care was taken to avoid difficulties in the title to large estates, the costs of transfer, as a general rule, were proportionably less with regard to the estates of wealthy men than they were with regard to the estates of poorer men, the title to which had not been so well drawn or so well taken care of. It was supposed that by the abolition of the law of settlement, the number of properties separately held in this country would be increased. He took upon himself to deny that, and for this reason—that they would not do so, unless the French, or he might almost say the Continental law, which prevented a man from dealing with his property by his last will, and which compelled an equal division of that property among his children, were introduced into this country, and the introduction of which would effect the object of those who desired an increase of the number of properties separately held; unless this was done, that object could not be accomplished; and even then it would not be accomplished in any degree corresponding to the wishes of the hon. Mover of the Resolution. According to the investigations of eminent statisticians, it was found in France that so great was the desire for the acquisition of land, so intense was the passion of adding acre to acre, that the result was this—that notwithstanding the law of amorcellement which compelled the division of a man's property equally among his children the number of proprietors had not of late years increased. There were several instances in this country in which by cutting off the entail, a nobleman who had only a limited interest in a large estate became the absolute owner of the fee-simple. What be- came of the estate then? With only one exception, in every such case that he was acquainted with, the absolute owner of the estate left it to the next heir exactly in the same way as it would have gone if it had been settled in the ordinary manner. Men did not act altogether upon their own free will in matters of this kind. They were influenced by their friends and relatives and by the usages of society. Our present system was not so much the result of the law of settlement as of the usage which prevailed among us, and which induced landed proprietors to look to their property not merely as a means of putting money in their pocket, but as a means of acquiring and retaining a social position which no other kind of property gave to a man.

said, that he could endorse almost every word that had fallen from the hon. and learned Member for Dover (Mr. Jessel); and could add that there was ample opportunity for all who were desirous to purchase land. To his own knowledge there was at present in the market upwards of 100,000 acres of land in various lots in all counties, and of all descriptions, and this had been the case over since he had been in practice. It occurred to him that the discussion had been proceeding on two fallacies. In the first place, the hon. and learned Member for Hereford (Mr. Wren-Hoskyns), who introduced the Motion, appeared to suppose that the limit of 21 years for which property was tied up was a consequence of the law of entail. It was no such thing. An entail was a limitation of an estate for a life in being with remainder to the issue who was tenant-in-tail; but such tenant-in-tail, at the age of 21, could acquire the absolute dominion over the property, with the consent of the tenant-for-life, if existing; or, if that estate had determined, by his own act, and quite independently of the number of years which had elapsed since the determination of the life estate. In the next place, it appeared to be assumed that these limitations were confined to real estate—but substantially they were equally applied to personal property. Take the ordinary case of a marriage settlement, the property was given to trustees, in trust for the husband, then, in trust for the wife, and next, in trust for the children. But the latter, with the disa- bility of infancy, could not deal with the property till they attained the age of 21 years. The case of personal property was the same as that of real property. Did the hon. Member who brought this Motion forward contemplate putting real property on a different and a worse footing than he did personal property? As regards the disappearance of small estates, he held it would proceed from a different cause than that assumed—a man would realize but a small income from a limited quantity of land; but he saw his neighbour, who had the value in money, investing it in houses, trade, or business, and realized a considerable income, and he was tempted to do the same. And in this way he accounted for the extinction of the class of yeomen. With respect to cottages, it was not on the larger estates that the cottages were in a bad condition, but where they were in the hands of small owners, beerhouse keepers, and small tradesmen, who looked not to the comforts of the occupants but to their own profit. He knew of no estates better managed than those subject to minorities, and where the trustees who received the rents laid out part of the money in repairs; or the property which was in the hands of the large proprietors.

said, the opinion had been expressed that the granting of leases would lead to the expenditure of capital to be laid out in the cultivation of the land; and this had been urged by the hon. and learned Member for Dover (Mr. Jessel), but his remarks only applied to the case of the rich landowners, and could not by any means refer to poor tenants-for-life; for in the present day, it would be found that the tenants were not ready to spend all the money required in the cultivation of the land, but they insisted that the landlords should put down their share in making the permanent improvements. And to a great extent this was done; but would be still more if it were not for the restriction imposed upon needy tenants for life who could not sell. He thought an unjust criticism had been made on the speech of the hon. Member for Cambridge (Mr. Fowler), who was charged with making a very revolutionary speech; and he was accused of having made a raid on the landlords, attacking them for having neglected their duties towards the cottagers. But the hon. Gentleman only quoted what was before the House in printed Returns; he did not accuse the landlords as a class of neglecting their duty to the cottagers—neither could he, since the cottages, as a rule, which were the worst, belonged to very small speculators, and after these to owners, whose estates were embarrassed, without power to sell. He believed that if a measure in the direction in which the Resolution of his hon. Friend pointed were carried, it would add to the number of residential landowners, by enabling men of wealth to purchase land which was not at present in the market. The great thing wanted for both landlords and tenants was a larger investment of capital in the cultivation of land. The poor impoverished landlord who was only a tenant-for-life was unable to do his duty either to his tenants or himself. It was because he believed that the abolition of entail would set the landlord free to deal with his land as he might wish, and would produce a beneficial effect by causing a greater amount of capital to be applied to the land, that he should support the Motion.

expressed his regret at not having heard the speech of the hon. and learned Member for Hereford (Mr. Wren-Hoskyns), who had paid such great attention, and had already made such valuable contributions to the literature upon the subject. He felt satisfied, however, that the conclusions arrived at in the speech of the hon. and learned Member must be substantially different from the terms of his Motion. To diminish the cost of the transfer of estates, to simplify titles, to make conveyancing cheaper, and even, perhaps, to reduce the period during which land can be entailed, might be very rational propositions to be discussed at the proper time, and if they were put in the form of a Bill they might perhaps deserve a good deal of support; but that furnished no good reason for the House pledging itself to this wide, vague, and large abstract Resolution, which might be interpreted ten different ways, and it might—though he knew his hon. Friend had no such object in view—appear to the minds of some men to denounce the existence of the landed interest in this country, and to assert dogmatically that the time had arrived when it ought to be abolished. Of course, it was not in that sense that the Resolution was under- stood by the hon. Member and by the House; but it was impossible for hon. Members to shut their eyes to the fact that extremely strong notions had been put forward of late, such as made them open their eyes and their ears with astonishment, and ask themselves whether, in a short time, there would be any sort of property in existence in which a man could invest his money, landowners having been told that unless they were on their good behaviour the time was coming when the question whether they were entitled to have any property in land would have to be discussed. Under these circumstances it was important, before they passed such a Resolution as that now before the House, that they should know its precise meaning and the meaning likely to be put upon it out-of-doors. For these reasons, while very much agreeing with the hon. Member that it would be an exceedingly good thing to simplify titles, and to get rid of the encumbrances of our present conveyancing system, and while not refusing to consider, on the proper occasion, the question whether the diminution of the length of time during which settlements could endure might not be salutary, he must decline to support the present Resolution. Indeed, the present did not appear to him the exact time to engage in abstract speculations; he rather thought that the House would legislate more wisely upon this subject, if they abstained from committing themselves to a Resolution calculated to excite different expectations in the minds of different men. He forbore to enter into the various matters so well referred to by the hon. and learned Member near him (Mr. Jessel); but in reference to the observations of the hon. Member who had preceded him (Mr. Dent), he might observe that in cases where a tenant-for-life was a poor man, he was empowered by law to borrow money upon mortgage of the property in order to effect permanent improvements upon it. He was inclined to believe that all classes in this country derived substantial benefit from the graduated system of society under which we lived, and that the poor agricultural classes, as much as any, derived benefit from the permanent character of landed estates, and from the feelings engendered by the wish to continue those estates in particular families. Under the present system, the poor were dealt with more liberally, more affectionately, and with more personal regard than they would be if land were looked upon as mere property for the investment of money. He trusted, therefore—and he was sure his hon. and learned Friend would join him in this hope—that nothing would be done by that House which would take from land its present character and reduce it to the position of mere property for speculative investment. If it did so, he thought the poor agricultural labourer would be the first to suffer.

said, he thought the Mover of the Resolution, in speaking of the very few hands in which land was now held in this country, had confined his attention to land of one kind only—namely, that devoted to agriculture. Possibly the number of owners of that description of land had decreased, as the hon. and learned Gentleman had stated, within the last century; although in the time of Queen Elizabeth it was in much fewer hands than at present. He believed, however, that the number of small parcels of land now held in this country for other than agricultural purposes was much larger than ever it was. Those who wished to invest their savings in small pieces of freehold land often went near some town and bought plots on which they might build houses and homes for themselves, instead of investing them in green fields, in the cultivation of which they would probably make serious blunders. That was the case in regard to a large portion of his own constituents in South Leicestershire, he believed to the numbers of about 2,700, who voted on account of freeholds which they owned within the walls of Leicester. A broader view should be taken of the question. Our system of colonization had been greatly influenced by the transmission of large landed estates from fathers to their eldest sons, and wealthy traders or manufacturers acquiring landed property generally followed the same rule in reference to its descent as the great nobleman. Younger sons, having little expectation of succeeding to any of their father's real estate, turned their energies to India or the Colonies, where they sought their fortunes, and generally with success. Any arbitrary rule tending to the minute sub-division of land would be injurious to the country. He, for one, did not think it advantageous to have enormous landed estates over which the personal influence and care of the owner could not possibly extend. That county or district was more happily situated which contained some 10 or 20 squires with £5,000 or £10,000 a-year each, instead of one great landowner with £100,000. But to legislate for the sub-division of land was a different thing; and he did not think the House were prepared to give an opinion on that point. And in dealing with the subject he should rather concur in the propositions of the hon. and learned Mover than in those of the hon. Seconder.

said, the Government were quite sensible of the extreme importance of, as far as possible, facilitating the transfer of land, and, as he had already stated, on more than, one occasion, a very elaborate and carefully considered Bill had been prepared, chiefly under the direction of the Lord Chancellor, which nothing but the pressure of Business prevented their introducing this Session. They hoped, however, to be able to introduce it early next Session. The Government had also expressed their intention of bringing in a Bill, much the same in effect as that once or twice proposed by the hon. Member for East Surrey (Mr. Locke King), to regulate the descent of land in cases of intestacy upon the same principles as now applied to personal property. The present Motion, no doubt, opened, a wide and interesting field of inquiry, as to how far the present law of settlement and entail interfered with the free circulation of land, prevented its coming into the market, and discouraged the application of capital and industry to its cultivation. That subject had already been discussed at considerable length, and he would only say that, although to some extent, the law of settlement and entail might interfere with the transfer of land, there were undoubtedly other considerations, which had been indicated, that possibly, on a survey of the whole circumstances of the case, might tend to counterbalance any inconvenience resulting from that. But be that as it might, he thought that if the most important question was to be dealt with at all, it ought to be by careful and well-considered legislation; and he trusted that the hon. and learned Mover would be satisfied with that discussion, and not deem it necessary to take the opinion of the House on an abstract Resolution dealing with a very comprehensive and complex subject, and which appeared to be susceptible of almost any number of different interpretations. They had seen it interpreted in one sense by the hon. Mover, and in another by the hon. Seconder. But a further difficulty, in itself insuperable to the adoption of the Resolution, was that it related to land only, although the law with respect to the settlement of personal property was very similar, or, at all events, analogous to the law with respect to the settlement of real estate. By the intervention of trustees, they could settle personal property on a number of tenants-for-life and 21 years afterwards, just as they could do with land; so that if they passed that Resolution they would affect land with a disability which did not apply to personalty. But, after all, what was meant by the Resolution? They heard from the hon. Mover that he would prevent land being settled upon persons unborn, and allow it only to be settled on lives in being; while from the hon. Seconder they heard that there was to be no settlement at all; that every holder of land must hold in fee-simple; and he had even spoken of it as a grievance that a man should be in possession of land who was not the owner. He did not know whether the hon. Member would have every man farm his own land; but that would bring them back to a very primitive state of society indeed. All that, however, illustrated the inconvenience of abstract illustration, and, in conclusion, he would only say that the subject was one of great importance, and one which might, perhaps, hereafter require to be dealt with by maturely-considered legislation.

said, that though on many points he agreed with the arguments of the hon. and learned Mover of the Resolution, he should vote against it because of the vague and uncertain terms in which it was couched. Under the present law there was no difficulty in obtaining for the owner in possession the full control and disposal of his land.

replied, observing that, though the discussion had to some extent effected his object, he could not withdraw his Resolution. He could not coincide in the very limited technical view taken by lawyers on this subject; and, in saying this, he was afraid he could not even accept from his disclaimer the opinions and sentiments expressed by one he so highly valued and admired as his hon. and learned Friend the Member for Richmond (Sir Roundell Palmer). Most of the lawyers who had spoken appeared to think that man was made for the land, not the land for man. He thought the land should be disseminated as widely as possible among actual holders. He was sorry that his Resolution should have been inadequately or indefinitely worded; he was not wedded to the wording but to the principle of his Resolution, and he must press it to a Division.

said, he was in hopes that his hon. and learned Friend the Member for Hereford (Mr. Wren-Hoskyns) would have consented to withdraw his Motion, after the very useful discussion which had arisen; but, as he had not thought fit to take that course, he would state in very few words why he felt compelled to decline to vote for the Motion, and what he did not mean by voting against it. He objected to encumber the clear consideration of the subject by registering beforehand the condemnation of the present law of land settlement. He considered that sort of condemnation was inconvenient on general principles. It was not satisfactory—especially it was not satisfactory for the Government—to set the example of dealing with a subject of this kind by a mere vague declaration. It was recorded, but there was no pledge to act upon it, and the only effect was to excite expectations which they could not bind themselves to fulfil, and which it was not desirable to excite until there was some prospect of fulfilment. Then, again, he knew no sufficient reason why, if the law of land settlement should be dealt with, action should be confined to settlement as affecting landed property alone; he therefore did not feel at liberty to say "Aye" to a Motion of this kind. On the other hand, he was by no means inclined to say that the present state of the law of land settlement was satisfactory; on the contrary, he believed, indeed, that the accumulation and disposition of land was governed mainly by causes that lay much deeper than any law of settlement, yet he admitted that was a subject to which the attention of the Government might very usefully be directed. He did not like to make any promise in relation to it at a time when the attention of the House was so much occupied with weighty matters—more than they knew how to dispose of; but he thought they would be able much better to approach it when the opportunity arrived if no previous Resolution of this kind were recorded. What he said of the Government applied also to independent Members. If his hon. and learned Friend were disposed to deal with the subject, no one was more capable of doing good service to the public by the amendment of this law.