The outcome of these reflections seems to be, that just as from parental sympathy springs State interference, which when developed casts off every shred of sympathy and antipathy, even to the extent of awarding to Shylock his pound of flesh, so from special interference, through a long process of generalisation and friction, springs law, which in its final development is as incommensurable in terms of justice as is an oak-tree in terms of gravitation and molecular repulsion. Growing out of justice, as the living, thinking animal grows (or grew) out of inorganic matter, it cannot be resolved by man into its component elements. And the process is going on around us to-day.

While then we may say that the law is a fairly coherent body of rules prohibiting the exercise of certain kinds of force (superior faculties) in certain classes of cases, it is not possible to say offhand, or to discover on paper, what those kinds of force are, or what are the classes of cases in which their exercise is prohibited. This can only be done by a careful and exhaustive examination of the laws themselves, by subjecting them to a searching analysis, by a scientific instead of a popular and superficial classification of their matter, and in short by a process of rigid reduction.

Thus are we brought to a position the very opposite of that taken up by those who would test every law by the standard of justice. We have reached the standpoint of Bentham, who cared nothing for vapourings about justice, but who would test every law by its effects on the welfare of society. (It is true he substituted the welfare of the greatest number for the welfare of the group; but this is immaterial here.) We are in the same boat with those who, rejecting the appeal to abstract virtue as a test of the goodness or fitness of their actions, substitute the ultimate welfare of the individual. A practical test is as far from view as when we started. Hence the persistence with which the need should be insisted on for the thorough study of law in the concrete, and the discovery, not the manufacture, of the true statical laws which are actually operative in societies; of their tendency, and of the dynamical laws of their change and development. It is by the discovery of these laws that we shall find ourselves in

possession of true and useful practical guides through the labyrinth of legislation and politics. We shall arrive at rules which are neither so simple as that enjoining an equal deal at cards, nor so vague and inapplicable as that which requires us to follow the effects of an action, down through its million ramifications, to the utmost ends of time.

The art of politics is the application of the science of nomology to the concrete; just as engineering is the application to human wants of the science of mechanics, and as navigation is one of the arts based on the science of astronomy. Until we have mastered the science we shall make but little progress with the corresponding art. Till Adam Smith laid the foundations of modern economics the fiscal policy of the Government was a game of perpetual see-saw between rival crotcheteers. All was rule of thumb. So is it to-day with the great question of liberty and law. Yesterday we were all free-traders and advocates of "let be"; to-day we are on the highroad to socialism; to-morrow the Fates only know where we shall be. The only cure for this policy of drift is a patient and intelligent study of nomology, whereby middle principles of practical application will be brought to light, and the absurd fallacies of social doctrinaires put to flight for ever.

CHAPTER X

LAND-LAW REFORMERS

It is easier to diagnose a disease than to prescribe a remedy. Most persons admit that the land law of this country is not what it should be. But it does not in the least follow that the cure proposed by each of the army of quacks ready to prescribe for the malady is the best, or even a wholesome treatment. At the same time it is a mistake to speak of land-law reformers as if the term denoted a number of persons with a common aim. They detest the present system, and there their agreement ends. It is impossible to deal with them as a single body with definite plans, because as a rule they disagree among themselves on almost every point of the program. Furthermore, they seldom set forth their views as a whole; and to pick out one proposal from one reformer and another from another would be manifestly unfair to both. Consequently in our endeavour to ascertain the opinions of this somewhat motley crew it is necessary to deal with them separately. I propose in this chapter to discuss the suggestions of a gentleman who has put himself prominently before the public in connection with what is called the Free Land League, and whose views on land-law reform are pretty clearly sketched in a lecture on the land question delivered some few years ago at the Oxford Reform Club, and since published with the sanction and approval of a cabinet minister who has since passed out of public notice. At the time of the delivery of the lecture, Mr. C. A. Fyffe described himself as the Liberal candidate for the city of Oxford, and although the election has since taken place, he is still in a position (so far

as I know) to sustain that rôle. Commenting upon the plans set forth in the lecture, Sir Charles Dilke was not ashamed to write: "What may we expect with regard to the treatment of the land question in the next Parliament? On this subject I will commend to notice a pamphlet which has been written by Mr. Fyffe, who is Liberal candidate for the city of Oxford, and who I hope will represent the city of Oxford. Mr. Fyffe in his pamphlet has discussed in a thoroughly practical way the difficulties of the agricultural interest in this country at the present time, and has shown methods for their solution which are deserving of much attention." I think Mr. Fyffe's views, though not altogether clear and definite, are shared by a considerable number of neo-radicals at the present time, and I am therefore of opinion that a careful examination of his proposed alteration of the law is not by any means a mere waste of time.1

Before prescribing a remedy, our social physician must needs diagnose the disease, and this he does through the mouth of an imaginary "intelligent foreigner." Unfortunately for the correctness of his diagnosis, the intelligence of the created cannot exceed that of his creator, and the foreigner is consequently a very unintelligent foreigner indeed. He expresses surprise at seeing the condition of a great manufacturing country unlike that of his own. He cannot understand large farming and its effects; still less the necessary results of the introduction of machinery. Let him speak for himself: "I see substantial farmhouses with good useful buildings, and often with immense cornricks about them; but I do not see the little houses scattered about, that one might expect, or the frequent large villages that would be met with in any equally rich district on the mainland. . . . And when I go from your lonely country districts into your towns, I observe enormous over-crowding and over-competition." Mr. Fyffe and his foreigner are unable to see the economy of concentration in the case of manufacture as opposed to the impossibility of concentration in the case of agriculture. His

1 What follows was originally written for and adopted by the Parliamentary Committee of the Liberty and Property Defence League, and was published by them under the title of Land, 1885.

foreigner is equally surprised to find that a population which exports millions of pounds' worth of manufactured goods should be obliged to import provisions. "I find," says he, “that you pay to the French and other nations annually the following sums: For butter, £12,000,000; for cheese, £5,000,000; for potatoes and vegetables, £4,000,000; for poultry and eggs £3,000,000. And I am not surprised that under such circumstances the English people, conservative as they are, are now asking themselves whether there is not something in their land system which needs a good deal of amendment."

The intelligent foreigner having pointed out the evils in a land system which, acre for acre, produces more food from the soil than is produced by any other system from the soil of any other country in the world, calls in the physician, Mr. C. A. Fyffe, whose "own ideas, such as they are, have been gathered in the course of some years' superintendence of corporate estates amounting to about seven thousand acres," and who has so far bungled his own affairs that he has now "the misfortune to be personally interested in a small landed property, of which," says he, "I have at present one hundred and fifty acres on my hands; so that I address you to-night in the character of a distressed agriculturist."

What a spectacle for the gods! The distressed agriculturist, after hopelessly collapsing under the load of one hundred and fifty acres, boldly comes forward and volunteers to undertake the management of the whole land of the country. But then, what city clerk does not know exactly how to smash the Mahdi, or to drive the Russians back beyond Sarakhs? The only difference in the cases is that somehow the city clerk does not succeed in propounding his views from the shoulders of a cabinet minister, that is all.

The

However, Mr. Fyffe begins well. It was doubtless a revelation to the reformers to learn that "there is no law of primogeniture, except when a man dies without a will." previous belief may be inferred, namely, that every landowner is by law compelled to leave the whole of his realty to his eldest son. Another disillusion awaited them when the news was to be announced that perpetual entail was also a bogey of the reformer's imagination, having been practically knocked on