cultural depression, or any other form of adversity, arrives, while the girls and younger children of the family are left to a poverty which seems all the more acute from the luxurious surroundings in which they have been brought up. If the result of graduated taxation should be to produce a more equal division of property between the members of a family; if rich men, instead of making an allowance to their sons, should seek to avoid death duties by capitalising and at once. handing over the amount; if the preservation of game. should be on a less extravagant scale; if estates should become smaller and less encumbered, and the habits of great country houses somewhat less luxurious than at present, these things would not injure the country.

Other consequences, however, of a far less desirable character are certain to ensue, and they are consequences that will fall more heavily upon the poor than upon the rich. Only a very small fraction of the expenditure of a great landowner can be said to contribute in any real degree to his own enjoyment. The vast cost of keeping up a great place, and the scale of luxurious hospitality which the conventionalities of society impose, count for much. Parks maintained at great expense, and habitually thrown open to public. enjoyment; the village school, or church, or institute established and endowed; all local charities, all county enterprises largely assisted; costly improvements, which no poor landlord could afford; much work given for the express purpose of securing steady employment to the poor, these things form the largest items in the budget. of many of the great landowners. Nor should we omit to mention remissions of rent in times of depression. which no poor man could afford to make, and very low rents kept unchanged during long periods of increasing prosperity.

In every considerable class there will be the good and the bad, the generous and the grasping; but, on the whole, no candid man will deny the extremely liberal spirit in which the large landed properties in England have been administered. Whatever ultimate benefits may be obtained by their dissolution, it is certain that the first effect will be to extinguish great centres of beneficence and civilisation, to diminish employment, to increase the severity of contracts, and in many other ways to curtail the pleasures and augment the hardships of the deserving poor. It is often said that wealthy Americans, not having the ambition of founding families, give more than wealthy Englishmen for public purposes; but I believe that an examination of the unselfish expenditure of the larger English landlords on objects connected with their estates would show that they in this respect fall little, if at all, below the Transatlantic example. It is, probably, only in England that we frequently see the curious spectacle of men with incomes of several thousands a year overwhelmed by lifelong pecuniary troubles, not because of any improvidence, or luxurious habits or tastes, but simply because their incomes are insufficient to bear the necessary expenses of their great position.

It seems likely, under the influences I have described, that a great change, both for good and evil, will take place. Land will probably, in future, be more divided, will change hands more frequently, will be treated in a more purely commercial spirit than in the past. Country places taken for mere pleasure, and unconnected. with any surrounding property or any landlord duties, will be more frequent. It is not probable that yeomen farmers will multiply as long as it is economically more advantageous for a farmer to rent than to purchase his farm; but land will be bought and sold more frequently,

in moderate quantities, as a speculation, let at its extreme value, and divested of all the feudal ideas that are still connected with it. The old historic houses will, no doubt, remain, but they will remain, like the French castles along the Loire, memories of a state of society that has passed away. Many will be in the hands of rich merchants or brewers, and perhaps American millionaires. They will often be shut up, as a measure of economy, for long periods. They will no longer be the centres of great landed properties, or represent a great county influence or a long train of useful duties. Parks will be divided. Picture-galleries will be broken up. Many noble works of art will cross the Atlantic. The old type of English country life will be changed, and much of its ancient beauty will have passed away.

Assuming, as is most probable, that these changes are effected gradually and without violent convulsion, they by no means imply the impoverishment of those who are now the great landed proprietors. No one can doubt that, at the present day, the members of this class would be better off if they had less land and more money; if their properties were in such forms that they had more power of modifying their expenditure according to their means. They will have to pass through a trying period of transition, but, as they are remarkably free from the prejudices and narrow conventionalities that incapacitate some Continental aristocracies in the battle of life, they will, probably, soon adapt themselves to their new circumstances. With ordinary good fortune, with skilful management, with the rich marriages they can always command, with the excellent legal advice that is always at their disposal, they will probably succeed in many instances in keeping together enormous fortunes, and the time is far

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distant when a really able man, bearing an historic name, does not find that name an assistance to him in his career. But the class will have lost their territorial influence. Public life, dominated, or at least largely influenced, by professional politicians of the American type, will become more distasteful to them. They will find themselves with few landlord or county duties, and with much less necessary hospitality to perform. and they will probably content themselves with smaller country establishments, and spend much more of their time in brighter lands beyond the sea.

It

The effects of highly graduated taxation on personal property will also be considerable, but probably not so great as on real property. It will strengthen the disposition of a rich man to divide as much as possible his investments, as all great masses of homogeneous, immovable property will become specially insecure. will, in this respect, increase a movement very dangerous to English commercial supremacy, which labour troubles and organisations have already produced. Most good observers have come to the conclusion that an appreciable influence in the commercial depression of the last few years has been the reluctance of rich men to embark on extensive enterprises at a time when labour troubles are so acute, so menacing, and so likely to exercise an influence on legislation. Far-seeing men hesitate to commit themselves to undertakings which can only slowly arrive at maturity when they see the strong bias of popular legislation against property, and the readiness with which a considerable number of modern statesmen will purchase a majority in the House of Commons by allying themselves with the most dishonest groups, and countenancing the most subversive theories. Every influence which, in any department of industrial life, increases risks and di

minishes profits must necessarily divert capital, and, whatever other consequences may flow from the frequent strikes and the formidable labour organisations of our time, it cannot be denied that they have both of these effects. If, in addition to these things, it becomes the policy of Governments to seek to defray national expenditure more and more by exceptional taxation, levied for the sake of popularity exclusively on the rich, the tendency to abstain from large manufacturing and commercial enterprises will be greatly accentuated. Such enterprises will not cease, but they will become less numerous. Many manufacturers will probably follow the example which some have already set, and throw out branch establishments in foreign countries. A manufacturer who has some thousand pounds on hand, instead of employing them, as he would once have done, in extending his business, will be inclined to divide them in distant investments. It need scarcely be pointed out how dangerous all this is to a country which has a population much beyond its natural resources, and mainly dependent upon the enormous, unflagging, ever-extending manufacturing and commercial enterprise which vast accumulations and concentrations of capital can alone produce.

Another consequence, which has, perhaps, not been sufficiently considered, is the tendency of large fortunes to take forms which bring with them no clear and definite duties. The English landed system, which seems now gradually passing away, had, to a very eminent degree, associated great fortunes and high social position with an active life spent in the performance of a large number of administrative county and landlord duties. It in this way provided, perhaps as far as any social institution can provide, that the men who most powerfully influence others by their example should on