a period for permitting and regulating the improve. ment of as many separate tracts of land in this little island? The fact would be almost incredible to one who was a stranger to the temporizing and patch-work policy of our legislation-which possesses no contrivance for permitting a common to be enclosed, a highway diverted, a man and wife divorced, a name changed, or a foreigner naturalized, without the setting in motion of King, Lords, and Commons, and all the cumbrous machinery of a legislative enactment.

In a former chapter it was shewn that the improvement of waste land by the assiduous industry of individuals who were permitted to enclose small tracts, and to appropriate the entire produce of the improvements they effected, had been, in every age and every country of the earth, the primary, though simple, means by which the vast districts now cultivated for the use of man were rendered productive-the first and indispensable step to the creation of all the wealth and refinements of civilised existence. The very foundation of the right to property in land lies in the expediency of encouraging these invaluable efforts for the development of its productiveness. It is evident then that the legal claims of individuals, however acquired, to an exclusive property in tracts of waste land, ought not to be permitted to prevent the continuance of this salutary and important process-but should be made to give way before the prior and superior right of the community to make the most of the resources which Providence has placed at their disposal in the productive capacities of their native soil. A wise and prudent

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government would remove every difficulty in the way of the improvement of land, and facilitate by every practicable means the enclosure and high cultivation of tracts of land by the enterprise, industry, and capital of individuals. That the same spirit which originally brought into cultivation our oldest and richest crofts still prevails among the peasantry of this country, is proved by the patches which we see cribbed in defiance of the law from the margins of every highway, and the sides of every common throughout the country, and the high state of productiveness to which these little gardens are brought, in spite of the general poorness of their soil, and the insecurity of their tenure. But instead of forbidding such encroachments, as they are called, the law ought, we consider, to sanction and encourage them. Instead of confining the industrious cottager to the scanty margin of the public road, or the obscure angle of the common, all that portion of our waste lands which is capable of cultivation ought to be placed at the disposal of those who are willing to cultivate and improve it, under such conditions only as will secure to the present legal owners a fair compensation proportioned to the value they derive from it in its actual state. Some general system of this kind, by the establishment of local commissioners, might be easily contrived; -and the result would, we think, be to draw forth a vast amount of industry which is now repressed for want of a vent, and greatly to increase the extent of land in cultivation.

For though it may be true, as we believe it is, that the system of cultivation by large farms and

hired labour, is the most productive, in the case of lands long placed under tillage-we think it quite certain that the reduction of waste land to tillage ab initio is best accomplished by the patient exertions and persevering industry of the cottier peasant, working on his own account on his own little patch of soil. He puts into his labour twice the exertion of even the free hired labourer of the capitalist-farmer, four times that of the constrained serf or slave. He will force a rich crop from a soil which would not repay the large farmer for the cost of tillage-much less afford him that profit on his outlay, the prospect of which alone will induce him to attempt its cultivation. The numberless experiments that have been made of granting small lots of land to poor men in this country-still more, perhaps, the success of the pauper colonies of the Netherlands, where a meagre and hungry sand has been by this process brought into the condition of a garden-prove to demonstration this important fact. It is pleasing to find the allotment system making its way into nearly every parish in the kingdom under the wise and humane influence of the landowner, who undoubtedly best consults his own interest by encouraging the spontaneous exertions of the peasantry to maintain themselves by their own industry, instead of depending on parochial relief. But the letting to poor labourers, as yearly tenants, of tracts of land already in cultivation by farmers, is not nearly so fertile a source of increased productiveness, as would be the permission to the same class to enclose, cultivate, and appropriate in fee, upon easy and fair terms,

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tracts of land now in a state of waste. The exertions of the cultivator will be proportionate to the security he has of reaping their fruits. And to call forth his full energies, he must have, not a mere temporary tenure of his allotment-but such a permanent hold of it, as will give him a complete conviction of the undisputed enjoyment of all its improved produce, and inspire that strong in terest in its improvement, which attaches universally to whatever we can call exclusively our own.

In Ireland, especially, might this system be adopted with the greatest prospect of advantage. There vast tracts of waste land are met with, producing next to nothing-while in their immediate contiguity are hordes of poor and wretched objects supported in idleness by the charity of their neighbours, who are themselves scarcely in better circumstances. The Irish cottier, who holds his acre only from year to year-or, as in the common case of the conacre, for a single crop,-at the will of a superior who takes care to leave him but a bare subsistence for his labour,—has little inducement to put forth his natural energies in the improvement of his holding. We cannot wonder at the low state of agriculture in the populous parts of Ireland under such a system: but give to these same cottiers a permanent interest in the soil,-and their habits of idleness and carelessness will give place to activity, ingenuity, frugality, and steady industry.

Whenever the Irish cottier has been permitted to settle in this manner on a tract of mountain or bog-land, the result has uniformly been what we here anticipate. On Mr. Gascoigne's property, and again on Lord Headley's, tenants dispossessed

from farms which they were unable to manage, were provided for in this manner, and according to the evidence of Mr. Barrington, the landlords have thereby greatly improved the value of their estates. The tenantry themselves were saved from destitution, and the tranquillity of the neighbourhood preserved*.

It should ever be borne in mind by legislators, that the law which secures a property in land is an artificial restraint on the free enjoyment by every individual of those gifts which the bounty of the Creator has provided for the satisfaction of his wants; this restraint is just only to such extent as it can be proved necessary for the general welfare, and wherever it is found to go beyond that point, its modification is required by the same principle which alone sanctions its establishment.

*See Mr. Barrington's evidence before the Committee on the State of Ireland in 1832. Qq. 132-7.