verted the payment of rent by service into payment
in money; this led to wholesale evictions, and necessitated the
establishment of the Poor Laws, The STUARTS surrendered the remaining
charges upon land: but on the death of one sovereign, and the expulsion
of another, the validity of patents from the Crown became doubtful. The
PRESENT system of landholding is the outcome of the Tudor ideas. But the
Crown has never abandoned the claim asserted in the statute of Edward
I., that all land belongs to the sovereign as representing the people,
and that individuals HOLD but do not OWN it; and upon this sound and
legal principle the state takes land from one and gives it to another,
compensating for the loss arising from being dispossessed.

I have now concluded my brief sketch of the facts which seemed to me
most important in tracing the history of LANDHOLDING IN ENGLAND, and
laid before you not only the most vital changes, but also the principles
which underlay them; and I shall have failed in conveying the ideas of
my own mind if I have not shown you that at least from the Scandinavian
or ANGLO-SAXON invasion, the ownership of land rested either in the
people, or the Crown as representing the people: that individual
proprietorship of land is not only unknown, but repugnant to the
principles of the British Constitution; that the largest estate a
subject can have is tenancy-in-fee, and that it is a holding and not an
owning of the soil; and I cannot conceal from you the conviction which
has impressed my mind, after much study and some personal examination
of the state of proprietary occupants on the Continent, that the best
interests of the nation, both socially, morally, and materially, will be
promoted by a very large increase in the number of tenants-in-fee; which
can be attained by the extension of principles of legistration now in
active operation. All that is necessary is to extend the provisions
of the Land Clauses Act, which apply to railways and such objects, to
tenants in possession; to make them "promoters" under that act; to treat
their outlay for the improvement of the soil and the greater PRODUCTION
OF FOOD as a public outlay; and thus to restore to England a class which
corresponds with the Peasent Proprietors of the Continent--the FREEMAN
or LIBERI HOMINES of ANGLO-SAXON times, whose rights were solemnly
guaranteed by the 55th William I., and whose existence would be the
glory of the country and the safeguard of