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ON THE CONFLICT IN ENGLISH HISTORY

BETWEEN PRIVATE OWNERSHIP OF LAND

AND THE

OWNERSHIP OF THE STATE AND THE COMMUNITY. BY MR. G. J. JOHNSON.

May 9th, 1883.

At the present time, owing greatly to Mr. Henry George's book on "Progress and Poverty," various schemes for depriving owners of land of their property, with or without compensation, and vesting all the land of the country in the State, are very eagerly and widely discussed. It is outside the province of this society to consider this question on its political, or politico-economical side, but it may be a useful contribution to the discussion to see what have been the tendencies of English life for the last seven hundred years as to the ownership of the soil, and this is clearly within our province.

The propositions this paper is intended to establish, are :— First. That since the reign of Henry the Second, there has been in England a complete substitution of individual ownership for ownership of land by the State or the Community.

Secondly. That this substitution has been the gradual, almost unconscious result of the working of economic laws, first evading, and then transforming the old principles of ownership of land.

I select the latter part of the reign of Henry the Second, say A.D. 1183, just seven hundred years ago, as the point at which the feudal principles of tenure were most strictly enforced, and at

which, consequently, the rights of private ownership were at a minimum. In speaking of the "State," or the "Community," I shall use the term State for the Imperial Government as it was under the feudal system, and as comprehending all feudal lordships from the King, as chief lord of the realm, down to the lord of the smallest manor; and I shall use the term "Community," as meaning any collection of persons dwelling together in townships or villages, which, as a Community, had common rights over lands. The first point to be noted is that the theory of ownership of land seven centuries ago is exactly what it is to-day, viz.—that all lands in the realm were, and are, held either mediately or immediately of the Crown (ie., substituting the modern equivalent, the State), and that all that any subject could, or can have, was, and is, a certain status, i.e., a relation to, or interest in such lands; but never the same absolute interest as he can have in his furniture, his books, or his money. But whilst the theory in the days of Henry the Second was the same as in the days of Queen Victoria, there was this important difference :-Then the theory was an accurate generalization of the facts; the interests of the State and of the Community did prevail over the interests of all private owners. Nor, whilst the theory remains the same, it no longer represents the fact that private ownership has everywhere and in every point prevailed over the interests of the State and the Community. To see this let us contrast the incidents of ownership of land in the years 1183 and 1883.

As there is nothing like a specific instance, let us contrast the Birmingham of to-day with the Birmingham of seven centuries ago. If at that date you had looked out from the spot where you now are, you would have looked on a different world. You would have seen, just below where St. Martin's Church now stands, a castle surrounded by a moat, and below that a few scattered houses. Looking around, you would have seen a common or heath, of which the last remnants still bear the name of Birmingham Heath. But the outward scene was not more different from the Birmingham of to day thin were the relations of the inhabitants

to the land on which they dwelt. If you had enquired as to the conditions on which the castle, the cottages and the common were held, you would have found that they all formed a division of land called the Manor of Birmingham. The Lord of the manor, then Peter de Birmingham, held his land on terms of military or knight service, that is, for every quantity of land called a knight's fee (which quantity being as much as worth £20 a year when measured in money value, necessarily varied with the quality and situation of the land), he was bound to find a fully equipped knight, or two yeomen, for service in the field for forty days in the year His immediate lord was Gervase Paganell, from whom Peter appears to have held nine knights' fees. Gervase, himself, held directly from the Crown.

This military service was the return, or rent or land-tax which the State (then represented by the King as chief lord of all the lords of the realm) exacted from the owners of land by knight service. The cottagers, whose dwellings lay below the castle where Digbeth and Deritend are now, were, no doubt, freemen (four are mentioned in Doomsday Book more than a century before) who held their lands on condition of rendering small fixed rents in money or in agricultural produce, and the rest of them, the villiens (of whom five are mentioned in Doomsday) who were bound to services to the lord of the Manor of a kind both servile in their nature and uncertain as to their quantity. In supplying produce or tilling his lands whilst he performed military service, these cottagers and villiens as surely sustained the military force of the realm, although in a different manner, as a member of this Society does who has to pay an additional income-tax in consequence of the late Egyptian expedition. (It is worthy of notice. in passing, that whilst in Aston, Erdington, Witton, besides villiens and cottagers there were a lower class of bondmen, there is no mention made of bondmen either in Birmingham or Edgbaston.)

The dwellers in the castle and the cottage were thus subject to the rights of the State. There remained that part of the manor which was not the lord's domain, cultivated for him, viz, the waste or common lands.

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Now, how great is the change. The castle is gone, although it is still marked by "Moat Lane" and "Moat Row." The military services by which the lord of the manor held his lands have been abolished by statute. The non-military services by which the rest of the inhabitants held their lands, gradually became obsolete. The common lands have been enclosed, and the attenuated rights of the lord of the manor were, a few years ago, purchased by the Corporation. Now every landowner in Birmingham holds either by a freehold or leasehold tenure. If by freehold tenure he has theoretically something less than the absolute ownership; but practically he is absolute owner, subject in some cases to a merely nominal land tax. As to the leaseholds, on which tenure nine-tenths of modern Birmingham has been built, and of which the tenure is as secure as freehold, and in the point of devolution after death much more convenient, such a tenure was not, until the reign of Henry the Third, recognised as giving any interest in the land, but as a personal contract only between the landlord and tenant.

In order, however, that we may trace how, and in what manner this great change took place, let us look a little at the incidents of land ownership seven centuries ago, and contrast such incidents with the present ones. These incidents naturally distribute

themselves under the two heads of

1. The conditions of tenure (services, and rents and obligations). 2. The disposing power of the tenants. This again subdivides itself into

1---The extension of the power.

2.-The mode of its exercise.

As to the conditions of tenure, I have already indicated the two main divisions. The nobility and gentry rendered services to the Crown, the yeomen, and the class below the yeoman (the villiens), speaking generally, rendered either agricultural produce or did agricultural or servile work to the military class. Money rents were small and rare, because money was scarce, and what we now call personal property, which, in its modern varieties of merchandize, machinery, stocks and shares is now of such enormous value,

was then chiefly represented only by agricultural stock, household furniture, horses and armour. There were, however, certain conditions of tenure which could only be fulfilled by money payments. The chief of these were (1) reliefs, (2) aids.

A relief was a money fine based on the theory that by the death of the tenant his lands lapsed again into the hands of his feudal superior, and if that superior allowed the heir of the tenant to continue the tenancy he was entitled to a compensation for so doing. In the reign of Henry the Second as Glanville, his Chief Justiciar informs us (IX. c. 4.), that the right of the heir to succeed was absolute if and when he paid or tendered the amount of the relief, and this was fixed at a fourth of the value of the lands in the case of a knight, and at one year's value in the case of a free tenant below the rank of a knight. In addition to the relief which the heir of Peter de Birmingham would have to pay at his death, Peter during his life, was subject to other exactions for the benefit of his superior lord; and in his turn was entitled to exact corresponding contributions from his own tenants for "aids," as they were called. The occasions on which aids could be exacted were ultimately settled to be (1) ransom of the lord if he were taken captive, (2) making his eldest son a knight, and (3) marrying once his eldest daughter. What Peter had to pay for the two latter purposes we do not know, but in the year 1193 he had to pay an amount equal to one-twentieth of the annual value of his lands and one-fourth of his movables, for the ransom of Richard the First, which is equivalent to a property tax of one shilling in the pound, and an income tax of five shillings in the pound. There were several other burdensome consequences of military tenure, of a nature too technical to be explained in a very rapid survey such as this. But all the burdens, small and great, of the old military tenures were abolished at the Restoration, after having remained suspended during the Commonwealth. In the meantime the burdens of the non-military tenures had been gradually lightened in the mode to be presently described.

As to the disposing power of the owner of lands seven centuries

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