in the shape of rent-he cannot expect both to retain this control and to obtain a rack-rent for his farms. If, in addition, political considerations induce him to maintain his full power over his estate, for these he must make a further abatement from his rent-roll. Nominally his income may be as great where this power is retained, as where it is given up; but ultimately abatements and defalcations will bring it down to the market value. of those privileges only to which the tenants feel themselves to be entitled. It is clearly, therefore, for the pecuniary benefit of the proprietor that a certain permanence of tenure should prevail.

But the tenantry in England are themselves in many districts averse to leases. These bind the tenant as well as the landlord, and they express themselves as unwilling to be bound. But the tenant also sacrifices his liberty for a consideration; and if the chance of making money and of leading a secure and comfortable life, be not greater under the one system than the other, he had better keep himself free. But his main dread arises from the instability of prices, and from the fear of a change in those fiscal regulations which, for the last generation, have been a constant source of vexation and apprehension to the tenant farmer. It were a far happier state of things for this class of men, if they could altogether turn their minds away from such considerations; and direct their whole energies to a more sure and stable means of paying their rents by increasing the fertility of their land, and by raising from the improved surface the largest possible amount of corn. With these means no fiscal regulations can ever interfere.

The great national evil which flows from a yearly tenancy is this-that the entire burden of permanently improving the soil devolves naturally and of right upon the landlord. The interest of the tenant is to extract as much as he can from the soil year by year, since only for so long is his tenancy secure. It is only from the landlord that the state can demand any present sacrifice for the purpose of securing a prospective increase of produce on unleased lands.

f

The owner who improves land so held, has it in his power to increase the rent as soon as its condition is bettered; and this, one would think, should serve as an inducement to the proprietor to expend his money in improvements. But there are several serious obstacles which lie in the way of a sufficiently large expenditure of money, for such a purpose, by this class of the agricultural community.

First, They are comparatively few in number; and as a body, therefore, there are far fewer among them who are familiar with the necessity that exists for a large outlay in improving the soil-under what circumstances, it ought to be expended-and

VOL. LXXXI. NO. CLXIII.

what powerful inducements there really are to such an expendi ture. We lament the prevailing ignorance among practical men; but were their superiors more generally and thoroughly instructed, a far more rapid progress of improvement might be confidently anticipated.

Then it is further unfortunate, that many of those proprietors who have both the knowledge and the will, possess far more land than the most princely fortune would suffice to improve, within several generations. Where whole counties are to be rendered more fertile through the capital of one individual, employed under his own direction or with his immediate consent and approbation, great good may occasionally be done: but while fashionable and political life present such strong temptations to expenditure for other objects, we cannot hope for that general and progressive development of the resources of the soil, from this quarter, which the present state of the country demands.

Again, a large proportion of the owners of the soil are really without the means, however willing they might be to expend liberally for so important an object. Burdened by settlements and mortgages, many estates are only nominally enjoyed by their reputed possessors; who thus derive from their encumbered properties what is barely sufficient to maintain them in the station in which they have been accustomed to move. From this state of things the whole people suffer. No permanent improvement of the soil can be effected by the owner for want of means -none by the tenant for want of encouragement.

And this natural evil, which to a certain extent could scarcely be prevented, is greatly aggravated by the system of Entails. Large tracts of land, in some parts of Scotland, seem to tell the intelligent traveller as he passes through them here and there showing him, in more favoured spots-what they would generally produce if generally improved by a judicious expenditure. And the traveller asks, who is the owner of this or that estate, and why is it thus comparatively neglected? The answer is, that the property is entailed, and the present possessor has no heirs; or that it is entailed on heirs-male, and the possessor has a family of daughters only, for whom it is his duty to save what will form a respectable provision when he is gone. There are few of our readers who are not familiar with some such cases; and there are few counties in the island, of which large portions do not languish in comparative unproduetiveness from the operation of the cause now specified.

Nor are the effects of this backwardness or inability of the landlord, confined to those districts in which the tenant-at-will system of holding naturally lays the main burden of improve

ment on the owners of the soil. Even where leases exist, the want of knowledge, of capital, or of enterprise, on the part of the tenants, not unfrequently call for the zealous interposition, the willing co-operation, and the enlightened example of the resident landlord. In remote districts of the country, leases alone are not enough; the tenantry must be stimulated by the presence, by the purse, or by the actual trials of the owner; and it is a misfortune to the country when the proprietor is permanently an absentee; or, if he reside on his estate, when he has either no skill to improve, or no capital to expend, by way of example to those who farm his land.

It would be premature, we think, to suggest or to recommend any special, legislative, or other remedy, for the evils to which we have thus slightly now adverted. We have great faith in the universal diffusion of knowledge, and in appeals to the reason and intelligence of instructed men. Out of such diffusion will naturally spring a more extended desire for agricultural improvement, among all those classes which are directly interested in the culture of the soil; and from this again, a wish to remove every obstacle which lies in its way. To diffuse I knowledge, therefore, is in our opinion the first object; and we must be content to wait patiently until this all-powerful princip le has produced its natural effect.

ART. IV. The Public and Private Life of Lord Chancellor Eldon. With Selections from his Correspondence. By HoRACE TWISS, Esq., one of her Majesty's Counsel. 3 vols. 8vo. London: 1844.

J

THI HIS is not only a valuable but a very agreeable book; much more so than we thought a Life of Lord Eldon, in three thick octavos, could be made. The announcement, we own, rather appalled than gladdened us. We saw, in our mind's eye, Mr Twiss's copying-clerk unceasingly at work. We anticipated whole chapters of debates on Catholic Emancipation, Chancery Reform, Reform in Parliament, and other great public questions; and we internally vowed that no human consideration should induce us to recommence a series of exhausted controversies, or fight over again the battles we have won. We have been pleasantly disappointed. Mr Twiss is evidently as tired of such matters as ourselves. He has given us just so much of them as are necessary to prevent chasms in the narrative;

*

but the staple of the work consists of letters (many from royal personages) supplied by the family; the curious biographical details which have appeared in the Law Magazine; a manuscript book of anecdotes and observations dotted down by Lord Eldon himself for his grandson, (new Tales of a Grandfather;') and notes of conversations with the old Lord shortly before his death, made by Mr Farrer and two members of the family. No biographer could possess richer materials, and few biographers would have made so good a use of them. Some of the old stories might have been omitted, and some of the letters thrown into an appendix; but, without being hypercritical, it would be difficult to suggest any fresh distribution of parts, any cuttings-out or fillings-up, by which the publication would be essentially improved; and it is generally allowed that those passages where Mr Twiss comes forward in his own person, such as his political portraits, are judiciously interspersed and extremely well written.

Of course the book is a partial book. What life or memoir of a public man is not? Of course Mr Twiss, a Tory though a Canningite, is occasionally unjust to Whigs; for even the truthloving Dr Johnson, when he wrote the debates of the House of Commons, always took care, he says, that the Whig dogs should have the worst of it. On some future occasion, therefore, we s'hall probably specify not a few statements and glosses in which v ve think the Whig party, and the truth of history, have been alik e aggrieved; but it is beside our present purpose to undertake an examination of the work under its political aspects. Neither is it our intention to compose a fresh abstract or abridgeraent of the narrative, though this is both the easiest and pleasantest way of dealing with volumes of biography. It is one, however, which can only be employed effectively by first comers; and owing to the pressure of other subjects, and en gagements, we happen to be among the last. Indeed, little or nothing seems left for us but to point the moral and adorn the tale; and our more peculiar object in this article will be, to compare Lord Eldon's career with that of other great lawyers; to form a precise estimate of his talents and opportunities; to ascertain what he owed to merit and what to fortune; and pronounce where his example should be followed, as well as when (for this will sometimes happen) it should be shunned. In analysing the causes of his rise, we shall necessarily be led to

* The Lives of Lord Eldon and Lord Stowell in the Law Magazine, are by Mr Townsend, author of a History of the House of Commons.

take a view of the general qualifications for success at the bar, and the difficulties which beset the aspirant to forensic honours. But we do not think this will prove the most uninteresting or unacceptable part of this article. There is hardly a family among the educated classes that has not a relative, connexion, or intimate acquaintance, embarked in the struggle: all these will be glad to learn what expectations they are justified in forming, and how they may best advance the fortunes of their favourites; while some will not be sorry to repair an involuntary injustice when they find, that, in this as well as in every other walk of life, it is one thing to merit, and another to command, prosperity.

These intimations will prevent any mistake as to our present objects; and we find it absolutely necessary, from the views we entertain regarding much that is contained in the work, to prevent any one from insinuating that because we are silent, we have nothing to the purpose to say.

We are the more anxious to take this opportunity to explain the true nature of the forensic career, with the circumstances that influence it, because no subject is so little understood. One popular fallacy meets us at the very threshold. Lord Eldon, the son of a wealthy trader, is said to have done wonders in overcoming the disadvantages of birth; and no longer ago than the last session, Sir Robert Peel, in justifying the reappointment of Lord Lyndhurst to the Great Seal, dwelt much less on his great experience, sagacity, and fine judicial understanding, than on his having risen by his own exertions from (what the Premier was pleased to term) comparative obscurity to the highest civic station next the throne. When such notions are sanctioned by such authority, it is time to probe them to the root.

A little book was published recently, entitled The Grandeur of the Law, from which it appears that more than seventy British peerages have been founded by successful lawyers, the Dukedoms of Norfolk and Devonshire being of the number. Sir William Howard, a judge in the reigns of Edward the First and Edward the Second, was the founder of the Howard family; Sir John de Cavendish, Lord Chief-Justice in the reigns of Edward the Third and Richard the Second, of the Cavendishes. But the church in those days was the only profession which afforded the lowly-born a chance; judgeships were conferred by the Edwards and Henrys without much regard to judicial qualities; and it will be found, upon nice enquiry, that the majority of those who rose to eminence through the law prior to the seventeenth century, were men of good family, or connected with the great. Indeed, it was not until the beginning of the eighteenth that the lists were thrown open to all comers,