Charles Bradlaugh

“ All land capable of producing food, and misused for preserving game, should be treated as uncultivated land. The diversion of land in an old country form the purpose it should fulfil—that of providing life for the many—to the mere providing pleasure for the few, is a crime. The extent to which the preservation of game has been carried in some parts of England and Scotland shows a reckless disregard of human happiness on the part of the landed aristocracy, which bids fair to provoke a fearful retribution. ”

“ We shall have for the future to talk in this country of the rights of life—rights which must be recognised, even if the recognition involves the utter abolition of the present landed aristocracy. The great rent-takers have been the opponents of progress, they have hindered reform, they kept the taxes on knowledge, they passed combination laws, they enacted long parliaments, they made the machinery of parliamentary election costly and complicated, so as to bar out the people. They have prevented education, and then have sneered at the masses for their ignorance. ”

“ It is calculated that for the deer forests of Scotland alone nearly two million acres of land—some of it the choicest pasture, much of it valuable land—is entirely lost to the country. Two red deer mean the displacement of a family, and it is, therefore, scarcely wonderful that we should learn that much of the Duke of Sutherland's vast estate is a mere wilderness. ”

“ You few, who lock up in your iron safes the title-deeds of more than half Scotland's acreage, I plead to you; forget mere territorial pride and power, and be generous while you may, for the day is near when your pride may be humbled, and your power may be broken. ”

“ Ancient footpaths are closed, common rights denied, game preserving and rabbit breeding carried on to the point of crop annihilation, county members nominated and returned as if the title to the freehold carried with it monopoly of political right; and a most contemptuous indifference is shown as to the condition of the tiller of the soil, or, what is even worse, there is a mockery of charity, to remedy in small part the evil which the very charitable gentry have themselves created. ”

“ We no longer pray, we argue—we no longer entreat, we insist—that spade and plough, and sickle and scythe, shall have fair right to win life and happiness for our starving from the land which gave us birth. ”

“ In France, land, prior to the Franco-Prussian war, bore one-sixth of all imperial burdens; in India, nearly one-half of the taxation falls on the land. To make the contrast more striking, we may point out that twenty-five years before the accession of the House of Brunswick, land paid nearly two-thirds of all the imperial taxes, the rents received by the aristocracy being then only the tenth part of what they are to-day. And these rents, which have grown tenfold in two hundred years, for what are they paid? For the natural fecundity of the soil, which the owner seldom or never aids. ”

“ We allege that the mischief is caused by those who exact so much for rent, and waste so much good land for pleasure, that no fair opportunity for happy life is left to the tiller of the soil. While the condition of the agricultural population is as thus stated, it cannot be pretended that sufficient compensation is found in the general prosperity of the artisan classes. Probably there are at this moment in England and Wales more than half-a-million able-bodied paupers—that is, men able to work, who cannot get work in a country where millions of acres of land fit for cultivation lie untilled. ”

“ Mill and other political economists, "that property in land is only valid, in so far as the proprietor of the land is its improver," and that "when private property in land is not expedient, it is unjust;" we contend that the possession of land involves and carries with it the duty of cultivating that land, and, in fact, individual proprietorship of soil is only defensible so long as the possessor can show improvement and cultivation of the land he holds. ”

“ Each member of the local society or tribe had a life interest in the land of the society; and when he lost it by death, or by quitting the tribe, a new partition of land was made, so as to prevent too large a portion falling into the hands of any one holder. And yet, after generations of progress, we find that at the passing of the Church Disestablishment Act the land was practically in the hands of a few large families, who consider that they are entitled to hold the soil without any sort of consequent liability to provide for the lives or to ensure the happiness of the inhabitants. ”

“ You now claim that the rights of property in land should be respected, while you have too frequently by your settlements and entails kept your lands out of the possibility of fulfilling any of the obligations of property, and you have robbed your tradespeople and creditors, because your land was protected by cunningly contrived statutes and parchments against all duty, while it enjoyed all privilege. ”

“ You have monoplised the land, and while you have got each year a wider and firmer grip, you have cast its burdens on others; you have made labour pay the taxes which land could more easily have borne. ”

“ Men suspected of inclination for poaching are easily sent to gaol, for cutting a twig or for nominal trespass, by magistrates who, owning land on which game is reared, regard it as most wicked sacrilege that hungry labourers should even look too longingly across the hedge. ”

“ At present you have prestige to aid you; use it for good, while you can, for once let the storm-wind of popular indignation turn against your rank and position, and your peerage-prestige will be like a rotten reed on which to lean. ”

“ The Game Laws are a disgrace to our civilisation, and could not stand twelve months were it not for the overwhelming influence of the landed aristocracy in the Legislature. The practice of game preserving is injurious in that, in addition to the land wasted for the preserve, it frequently prevents proper cultivation of surrounding lands, and demoralises and makes criminals of the agricultural labourers, creating for them a kind and degree of crime which would be otherwise unknown. ”

“ To-day labour struggles despairingly against reduced wage, and to-morrow's outlook is still more gloomy. While wages are decreasing, the cost of living is augmenting. House rent in England and Wales alone has increased from £36,575,600 per year—which it was in 1846—to £80,726,502—which it had become in 1873—a growth of more than thirty-four millions of pounds in twenty-seven years, all paid by the poor to the rich. The annual income from land, including mines and minerals, has increased, since 1698, from a little over £6,000,000 to about £200,000,000. ”

“ The growth of the Agricultural Labourers' movement in England, the increasing agitation for the repeal of the law of hypothec in Scotland, and the wail from ruined farmers in the Lowlands, all serve to show that it will be on the Land Question that that large section of the English aristocracy which regards the preservation of territorial rights and privileges as essential to good Government will shortly have to encounter a stronger force, and to cope with a wider movement, than has been manifested in England during the last 200 years. ”

“ In Scotland, even under the old semi-barbarous, but patriarchal, system of clanship, the land was treated as the property of the entire clan—so much so, at any rate, that the chief of the clan had no power, under penalty of death, to alienate any portion of the land without formal authority of the clan given in solemn assembly, and the meanest member had privileges in connection with the cultivation of the soil. ”

“ All progress in the producing power of labour has added to the value of land, and yet the landowner, who has often stood worse than idly by while the land has increased in value, now talks of the labourer as of the lower herd which must be checked and restrained. As Louis Blanc says: "The general wealth and population are susceptible of an almost indefinite increase, and, in fact, never do cease increasing ”

“ These land monopolists, too, are ever grasping; they swallow common lands and enclose wastes, relying on their long purses, the cost of legal proceedings, and the apathy of a peasantry ignorant of their rights and unable to perform their duties. ”

“ In Ireland you have a landlord—perhaps like the late Most Noble the Marquis of Hertford—constantly residing out of the country, having no sympathy or connection with his property, except that of sucking it as dry of vitality as the law permits him. ”

“ The Westminster Review says that no less than 7,000,000 acres of commons have gone to increase the already large estates of adjoining proprietors during the last 200 years—all, be it remembered, since the landed aristocracy have, under the present reigning family, wielded full parliamentary power—all taken during the time that the imperial national debt had risen from about £52,000,000 to that enormous sum, of which we still owe upwards of £750,000,000 in England, besides our debt in India, being estimated at over £120,000,000 more. ”

“ In this land question the abolition of the Game Laws must be made a prominent feature.
The enormous estates of the few landed proprietors must not only be prevented from growing larger, they must be broken up. At their own instance and gradually, if they will meet us with even a semblance of fairness, for the poor and hungry cannot well afford to fight ”

“ Landowners, in the large majority of instances, and this whether the proprietor be Whig or Tory, regard their tenants as bound to follow the politics of their freeholder, and as fairly liable to ejectment when malcontent.
Mr. Latham, a magistrate of Cheshire, before the House of Commons' Committee, said that "it was the evil of property that a man considers that he owns not only the property itself, but that he owns the souls of the tenants also." ”

“ At present by gradual concession, you may even win a meed of praise for generosity of conduct, and you may avert for generations that appeal which hunger has always prompted, when pride and power have been deaf to the cry of a nation. ”

“ The land is constantly increasing in value, or, at any rate, a higher rental is exacted by the freeholder, and yet there is no corresponding contribution from the landowner towards the imperial burdens; on the contrary, the landowner shifts the fiscal burdens on to the labourer.
In illustration of this, the territorial incomes for England and Wales alone amounted, in 1800, to £22,500,000; in 1810 they had increased seven millions ”

“ Country members who shun the House of Commons while estimates are voted, and go to dinner when emigration and pauperism are topics for discussion, crowd the benches of St. Stephen's when there is some new Act to be introduced for the better conviction of poachers without evidence, or for the protection of fat rabbits, which eat and spoil crops, against lean farm labourers, who, having not enough to eat, pine alike in physique and intellect. ”

“ The bulk of the land is in the hands of comparatively few persons, and these monopolise the House of Lords, and materially control the House of Commons. In Scotland, 171 persons own 11,029,228 acres of land, and 409 other persons own other 3,876,980 acres, that is, 580 persons own 14,906,208 acres. In England 773 persons own 8,219,468 of acres, making that, in England and Scotland, 1353 persons own more than twenty-three millions of acres. ”

“ In Plymouth, in 1870, one out of every fifteen persons was in receipt of pauper relief; and we fear that throughout England and Wales it would be found that, at the very least, one in every twenty is in the same position, while, in addition, many thousands struggle on in a sort of semi-starvation misery. ”

“ It is in connection with the Land Question that thoughtful working men are commencing to look for a speedy solution of some of the most difficult problems as to the more striking evils of modern society. ”

“ And yet the noble lords and high-minded gentlemen who thus grind down the poor, and who, by cheating their labourers, demoralise honest labourers into cheats—will preside at pious gatherings, and talk about saving the souls of those whose lives they are damning. ”

“ An agricultural labourer (with a wife and family) , whose weekly pittance gives him bare vitality in summer, and leaves him often cold and hungry in winter, in the midst of lands where game is preserved, needs little inducement to become a poacher. ”