THE LAND QUESTION:
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A LECTURE
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GIVEN AT THE OXFORD REFORM CLUB, NOVEMBER 26, 1884, BY CHARLES A. FYFFE, M.A.,
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THE LIBERAL CANDIDATE FOR THE CITY OF OXFORD. "What may we expect with regard to the treatment of the land question in the next Parliament? On this subject I will commend to notice a pamphlet which has been written by Mr. Fyffe, who is Liberal candidate for the city of Oxford, and who I hope will represent the city of Oxford. Mr. Fyffe, in his pamphlet, has discussed in a thoroughly practical way the difficulties of the agricultural interest in this country at the present time, and has shown methods for their solution which are deserving of much attention.—Sir Charles Dilke. PRINTED AND PUBLISHED BY THE NATIONAL press agency, limited,
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Mr. Fyffe, who was very heartily received, said:— The subject on which I am going to address you this evening is a somewhat technical one. It is necessary to go into details which may cause some strain on your attention; but if we are really to understand the land question, if we are to arrive at projects of reform which are practical and not speculative; above all, if we are to make out such a case that people who are not inclined to agree with us will confess that there is something in what we say,—then it is a matter of necessity to go into details, and to make ourselves see things, not as the politician or the man of letters sees them, but as the farmer, or the labourer, or the small tradesman sees them, or, I may add, as the emigrant sees them, when he leaves his native village, where, in all its solitude, he finds that there is no room and no career for himself.
I think that if an intelligent foreigner, accustomed to the system of general proprietorship in land which prevails in most European countries, were to go about the midlands and south-east of England, about our growing towns as well as our country districts, with the object of studying our land-system and the results that flow from it, he might make some of the following remarks:—"I see a country on the whole fertile and well cultivated, but often very lonely. I see the houses of the country-gentlemen more handsome, more picturesque, more beautifully wooded than anywhere upon the continent of Europe. I see substantial farm-houses with good useful buildings, and often with immense corn-ricks about them: but I do not see the homes of an agricultural people; I do not see either the little houses scattered about that one might expect, or the frequent large villages that would be met with in any equally rich district on the mainland. And when I go into the labourer's cottage I am astonished to find that he has generally no further tie with his home than a weekly tenancy of its four walls; that he possesses no property whatever beyond a few articles of furniture; that he supports his family on from ten to fourteen shillings a week as long as he can earn wages; and that he looks forward to old age spent in the workhouse, or in receipt of public charity, as a matter of course. I further observe that the quantity of stock on your farms, though considerable, is extremely small in proportion to the population of the island, and that an insignificant amount of land is planted with orchards or fruit trees, or used in market-gardening. And when I go from your lonely country-districts into your towns, I observe enormous over-crowding and over-competition, with great misery and squalor in the poorer parts. I see everywhere that as towns extend the land is let on building-leases and not sold to the occupants; and finally, after being wearied out with the farmer's complaints of the cheapness of corn, and after being told that land within forty miles of London is going out of cultivation because farming cannot be made remunerative, I find that the consumption of milk in Liverpool is one pint per week per person; that meat is everywhere enormously dear; and that you pay to the French and other nations annually the following sums:— for butter, £12,000,000, for cheese, £5,000,000, for potatoes and vegetables, £4,000,000, for poultry and eggs, £3,000,000. And I am not surprised," the foreigner might say in conclusion, "that under such circumstances the English people, conservative as they are, are now asking themselves whether there is not something in their land-system which needs a good deal of amendment."