hristiania, 1878.

3. _Official Reports of Prefects on the Economic Condition of the
Provinces of Norway in 1876-80._ Christiania, 1884.

4. _Publications of the Statistical Bureau, Christiania._

The advocates of a general redistribution of landed property in Ireland,
as well as those who are holding out to the agricultural labours of
other portions of the United Kingdom the Arcadian lure figuratively
known as the 'three acres and a cow,' will find in the work cited at the
head of this article the amplest materials for the justification of the
views they are pressing for adoption partly as a remedy for agricultural
distress, but essentially in application of the Socialist doctrine that
the people of a country have an inherent right to an absolute,
proportionate possession of its soil.

Mr. Laing's 'Journal' is, indeed, not a record of travel and adventure,
but a treatise, admirably written and replete with facts, in
demonstration of the great superiority of the Norwegian system of land
tenure over that of any other part of civilized Europe. His views have,
moreover, been to a great extent adopted in the numerous works that have
since been produced by British travellers who, after a rapid drive over
the main routes of Norway, have described in terms equally glowing the
happy and enviable condition of the _Bonde_ or yeoman farmer of that
country.

Considering there is much in common in regard to race, religion,
language, character, and civilization, between the inhabitants of that
interesting little country and its maritime neighbours--the populations,
more especially, of England and Scotland, it will be instructive, on the
eve of the agrarian revolution with which the United Kingdom is
threatened, to study and analyse the statements and conclusions of Mr.
Laing, and to trace the subsequent and present operation of the peculiar
land laws which he so highly extolled in the earlier part of this
century.

With that object we proceed to describe, almost in Mr. Laing's own
words, the condition of the peasant proprietors of Norway at a period
(1835) when, out of a population of 1,194,827, only about eleven per
cent. inhabited towns, the land in rural districts being held by 103,192
proprietors and tenants, the proportion of the two latter being
respectively seventy and thirty per cent.

'The Norwegians,' wrote Mr. Laing, 'are the most interesting
and singular group of people in Europe. They live under