CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY Cornell University LIbr ii r H35 .G76 Recess studies. olin 3 1924 030 358 >-" A v^. '^^ \ ':-M ^M R»^^i r^."^ ^1*, The original of tliis book is in tlie Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924030358877 EECESS STUDIES Printed by R. Clark FOR EDMONSTON & DOUGLAS, EDINBURGH. LONDON . . HAMILTON, ADAMS, AND CO. CAMBRIDGE . . MACMILLAN AND CO. DUBLIN . . m'gLASHAN AND GILL. GLASGOW JAMES MACLEHOSE. EECESS STUDIES EDITED BY Sm ALEXANDER GRANT, Bart. LL.D. QVIPPE F.TIAM FESTIS QUyEDAM EXERCERE DIEBVS FAS ET yVRA SINUNT. EDINBUEGH EDMONSTON AND DOUGLAS 1870 A ./" :' CORNELL-^ k. . i-^'i ilji r\ r^ ft a M 35 PKEFACE. This volume might almost be described as the result of a " fortuitous concurrence of atoms." The idea from which it sprang will be sufficiently patent to aU. That idea was that the Autumn Recess, which falls to the lot of almost all professions in this country, might be utilised in the preparation of calm and careful judgments upon some of the questions occupying, or likely to occupy, the minds of men in Parliament, or elsewhere. The great majority of the writers are personal friends of the Editor's. They were invited to contribute what to them might seem good on subjects in which they were severally interested. The editorial function has con- fined itseK to the collecting of the following papers, which are now offered to the public on the strict prin- ciple of limited liabUity, each writer having said his say on his own subject, under his own name. CONTENTS. I. The Irish Land Question. By the Hon. George Charles Brodrick . . . . 1 II. From Pesth to Brindisi in the Autumn of 1869. By- Sir Charles Edward Trevelyan, K.C.B. . . 55 III. The Endowed "Hospitals" of Scotland. By Sir Alexander Grant, Bart., LL.D. . .117 IV. The Graphic Eepresentation of the Laws of Supply and Demand.^m^^^thfiir Application to Labour. By Professor Fleeming Jenkin . . . .151 V. Church Tendencies in Scotland. By the Eev. Robert Wallace, D.D. . . . .187 VI. On the Declining -Production of Human Food in v Ireland. By DvrLjon Playfair, C.B., M.P. . 241 VII. Scotch Education Difficulties. By Alexander Craig Sellar, Esq. 261 VIII. Mr. Mil] on Trades Unions — a Criticism. By James Stirlmg, Esq. . . ... 309 IX. Election Trials and Inquiries under the Corrupt Practices' Acts. By Thomas Chisholm Anstey, Esq. . . ...'.. 333 X. Hindrances to Agriculture. (From a Scotch Tenant Farmer's point of view.) By George Hope, Esq. 375 THE IRISH LAND QUESTION. The Irisli Land Question, in its broadest aspect, opens too vast a range of legal, economical, and agricultural research, to be embraced within a single view. In its narrower and more popular sense, it is the question whether the existing relations between Irish landlords and Irish tenants are such as to call for the intervention of Parliament, and, if so, upon what principles legislation ought to proceed. The causes out of which this question arises have been traced back to ages far beyond historical record 5 but the conditions which must govern its legislative settlement are to be sought in a period almost within living memory. Antique customs and modes of life, known to us chiefly by tradition or analogy, may throw a welcome light on the growth of ideas now prevalent among the people, but they are of little avail in guiding the course of national policy. That course must be guided by an enlightened insight into the present agrarian constitution of Ireland, and an enlightened foresight of the new agencies which are already in process of development. We cannot, how- ever, understand the present agrarian constitution of Ireland, stiU less can we forecast her future, without some knowledge of her past history, which may at least help us to realise why a class endowed so highly with all the domestic virtues as the Irish peasant-farmers, should exhibit, in vindication of tenant-right, a spirit of lawless desperation, often breaking out into savage deeds of bloodshed. 2 THE IRISH LAND QUESTION. I. From this point of view, it would doubtless be highly instructive, as well as interesting, to ascertain the exact position of those who occupied and cultivated the soil under the ancient Customary of Ireland known as the Brehon laws. We might then be able to judge how far it is historically pro- bable that modern claims of tenant-right have their origin in tribal notions of tenure, sanctioned by the usage of centuries. Unfortunately, the Brehon laws, so far as they have already been collected and published, do not supply adequate materials for this purpose, and their interpretation is still involved in much obscurity. They exhibit a barbarous minuteness of regu- lation on the subject of distraint and other matters connected with land, but they do not define the rights of individual occupiers as against the chieftain, or as against the clan, with equal precision. It would appear from the most recent in- vestigations that primitive Irish society was far more highly organised than is generally supposed, that its institutions closely resembled those of Teutonic communities at the same period, that individual proprietorship was fully developed, and that a kind of partnership, inconsistent with the spirit of feudal- ism, prevailed between Irish landlords and one class of Irish tenants. This relation, indeed, has been compared by the learned translators of the Brehon " Senchus Mor " with the Metayer system of Lombardy, inasmuch as the stock was supplied by the chief and the labour by the tenant ; a feature which, so far as it goes, is characteristic of tenure by contract rather than of tenure by statvs. But other forms of tenancy are recognised by the Brehon laws, which, upon the whole, are indicative of a feudal rather than of a patriarchal or demo- cratic commonwealth. We are not, however, left without contemporary evidence on the actual working of the old Irish land-system. Sir John Davies, who studied it with admirable diligence as Attorney General for Ireland in the reign of James I., when the Brehon THE IKISH LAND QUESTION. 3 law was still a living code in some parts of the country, has given a lucid account of it, not only in his well-known Dis- covery, but also in his letters of earlier date to the Earl of Salisbury. After making every allowance for the prejudices of an English lawyer commenting on the " lewd customs" of a subject race, we cannot but prefer the explicit statements of such an authority, speaking, under a sense of professional responsi- bility, of facts elicited by a judicial commission of which he was himself the leading member, to whole volumes of specu- lative archaeology. Now, Sir John Davies, while he implies that in districts under Brehon law the great mass of the people were occupiers of land, and, moreover, that demesne lands were reserved for the chief apart from the peasant lands of the clan, emphatically negatives the idea that "fixity of tenure," as now understood, was then established. On the contrary, he refers again and again to the utter uncertainty of tenure under Brehon law, and endorses the doctrine of the English courts that Irish tenants had no estates, but only " a scambling and transitory possession at the pleasure of the chief of every sept." A wider acquaintance with the land-systems which pre- ceded feudal tenures in Europe, and which have their counter- parts in India, justifies us in drawing somewhat different inferences from the facts adduced by Sir John Davies. It is possible that by his time the old distinctions between various classes of tenants may have been well-nigh obliterated, and that aU the social orders between the chief and the mere serf had been reduced to a tolerably uniform level of vassalage. We know, from other sources, that many abuses of feudalism had been engrafted on Brehon land-tenure, and there is nothing incredible in the assertion that all Irish clansmen, of every degree, were practically subject to unlimited " cuttings" and " cosherings" at the pleasure of the chief It does not follow, however, as Sir John Davies contended, that their condition was 4 THE lEISH LAND QUESTION. that of villeins, and later researches have exposed the fallacy of his belief that " if any one of the sept had died, his portion was not divided among his sons, but the chief of the sept made a new partition of all the lands' belonging to the sept, and gave every one his part according to his antiquity." As Hallam remarks, " it is impossible to conceive that these partitions were renewed on the death of every one of the sept." It is far more probable, and rendered almost cer- tain by reference to similar Indian customs and the system of " rundale," not yet extinct in Ireland, that the family inherit- ance was kept entire, while there was a frequent readjustment of lots between members of the family by squaring or "striping" the land, as it is stUl called. To such a state of society, neither feudal nor commercial ideas of proprietorship can be strictly applied, and it was doubtless a mere error of English colonists to designate Irish clansmen indiscriminately as " tenants-at-will " of their chief. On the other hand, the attempt made on their own behalf to identify them with English freeholders, when questions of forfeiture arose, was scarcely less futile. Tenants-at-will, it is true, had their place in early Brehon law, but even they ceased to be re- movable after a certain period of occupancy ; and Sir John Davies himself admits quite enough to show that few, if any, Irish tenants of Irish lords, in his own day, were liable to arbitrary eviction. But they were assuredly not freeholders, in the English sense, if, as seems clear, they only held land as members of the clan, and subject to various tribal obliga- tions, besides exactions in kind, both certain and uncertain, in lieu of rent or military service. In short, it is idle to look for an exact counterpart of Brehon land-tenure in the history of our own law, or to imagine that its fantastic and haK-deciphered features can possibly serve as useful prece- dents for this age. Whether the memory of that ancient tenant-right, such as it was, can have survived four sweeping THE lEISH LAND QUESTION. 5 confiscations and infinite changes of ownership and tenancy by natural means, is a different and doubtful question. It may have been treasured up, unknown to lawyers and states- men, in minds inured to secrecy by oppression, or it may have utterly died away, and have been revived in a spurious form by patriotic antiquaries. What is certain is, that Brehon law was, in theory, less communistic than it has been repre- sented, while, in practice, it was fatal to all progress, and, if restored, would be more intolerable to modern Irish farmers than occupation under modern Irish landlords. II. The earliest authentic descriptions of Irish agriculture, whether under the Brehon or under the English laws, are to be found in documents of the sixteenth century. Ireland fills a very large space in the State Papers of Henry VIII.'s reign. A considerable part of it was visited by a Eoyal Commission in 1537-8 ; and copious notices of its agrarian state are contained in Spenser's View, and other scarcer tracts by English settlers of the Elizabethan period. The evidence of these writers is the more valuable, because their observations were made after the first great confiscation, and before the final extinction of Irish independence under James I. They naturally dwell more on the relations between English landlords and Irish tenants than between the chiefs and humbler members of Irish clans ; but it is remarkable that all, with one consent, point to a seme of insecurity among tenants as the master-evil of Irish agricul- ture, both withiQ and without the Pale. Under native chiefs, the Irish tenant had no security that he would enjoy the fruits of his labours, for they might be consumed in a single night, in strict accordance with national usage, by a band of wild gallowglasses on a marauding expedition. Under English "undertakers," he fared better, in so far as he paid rent in lieu of uncertain dues and services ; but, in 6 THE lEISH LAND QUESTION. spite of express provisions for his protection in the royal grants, he was usually a mere tenant-at-wilL Spenser's testimony upon this point deserves special atten- tion. He severely blames landlords, " almost throughout Ireland," for granting no leases, but letting their land from year to year or during pleasure. He attributes this practice partly to a love of power and partly to a restlessness incident to that Utopian age of adventure, when men settled in Ireland as they might have settled in the New World, " daily looking after change and alteration." He adds, however, that Irish tenants will, in general, only take lands "so long as they list," not choosing to make themselves permanently depend- ent on landlords, who may " shamefully rack them" with coigny and livery, or the like arbitrary extortions. A more probable explanation of their apparent indifference to security of tenure is to be found in the fact that, by the ancient Irish laws, a tenant accepting a lease of more than a certain length from an alien lord forfeited his tribal privileges. But this does not affect the force of Spenser's main argument. So urgent did the Irish land question of his own day appear to him, that, after setting forth the disastroiis effects of insecurity, he goes so far as to anticipate the scheme of compulsory leases. " And this inconvenience may be reason enough to ground an ordinance for the good of the commonwealth agaiTist the private helioof or will of any landlord that shall refuse to grant any such term or estate unto his tenant as may tend to the good of tlu whole realm" He proceeds to discourse, in language which has not lost its significance, on the beneficial influence of leases in pro- moting better tillage, the erection of decent houses, greater domestic comfort, and the proper enclosure of pastures— an object which he shows to be important as a measure of police. These views are confirmed, to a great extent, by Eobert Payne in his Brief Description of Ireland, published in THE lEISH LAND QUESTION. 7 the year 1589. Payne, like Spenser, was one of the English colony planted in Munster after the suppression of Desmond's rebellion, and his treatise is in the form of a report to the " partners," whose resident manager he appears to have been. He, too, complains that many of the English undertakers pre- ferred Irish to English tenants, because the former would pay all the old Irish dues, and refused to give either such a tenure as would induce them to build, plant, and cultivate with hus- bandlike foresight. A modern reader may be surprised to learn that, in the opinion of this author, a term of twenty-one years, or three lives, was unreasonably short, and that " the better sort of undertakers " offered to English tenants " either three hundred acres of land in fee-farm, or four hundred acres by lease for one hundred years, for sixpence an acre, without any fine." One Sir Eichard Greenfield, whom he praises highly, would " let any poor man, of honest behaviour, a house, forty acres of land, and six milch kine, for 40s. the year, for the term of three lives," remitting half that rent if the kine were returned after the farm was stocked. Another under- taker, " Master Phane Beecher," was in such repute as a good head-landlord that no more land was to be had of him. It seems, however, that he had benevolently covenanted with all his own tenants, for the benefit of their future under-tenants, so that parcels of fifty, sixty, or one hundred acres were stiU to be had " under as good conditions as the best, his special care being that every inhabiter there should have as much liberty as a freeholder in England." A similar treatise, by John Dymmok, supposed to have been written about the year 1600, attributes the povei-ty and bad cultivation of Ireland generally to the very same cause — " the great exactions of the lords upon their tenants ; for the tenant doth not hold his land by any assurance for term of years, or life, but only ad voluntatem domini, so that he never buildeth, repaireth, or encloseth the ground ; but, whensoever the lord listeth, is 8 THE IRISH LAND QUESTION. turned out, or departeth at his most advantage, which, beside the great want of grain to supply that country, breedeth also a general weakness, for .want of inhabiting and planting the people in places certain, being of themselves given to a wan- dering and idle life." It would be easy, were it necessary, to multiply evidence of this kind, but enough has been adduced to prove, at least, that shrewd Englishmen in the reign of Elizabeth clearly discerned that intimate connection between slovenly farming and tenancy-at-will which Irish landlords have been slow to realise in later times. III. A century had passed away — the most eventful, per- haps, in the whole history of Ireland — when Sir William Petty, who had been employed for many years in surveying and allotting forfeited lands, embodied the results of his researches in his celebrated Political Anatomy and Report from the Council of Trade, dated respectively 1672 and 1674. Since the days of Spenser, the settlement of Munster had been followed by the far more statesman-lilc e and complete settle- ment of Ulster; the Great EebelUon of 1641, kept alive by the varying fortunes of the English civil war, had been finally crushed out by Cromwell ; and the vast confiscations which ensued, driving many of the native owners into the wilds of Connaught, and many to the West Indian plantations, had been confirmed under the Eestoration — with a reservation of one-third for old proprietors of proved loyalty — by the Acts of Settlement and Explanation. Sir William Petty, writing, like Sir John Davies, under the impression that Ireland had at last reached an era of permanent tranquillity, furnishes us with the earliest agricultural statistics of the country— then beginning to recover from its long exhaustion. These statis- tics, precious as they are, cannot be trusted implicitly, since they start with the assumption that Ireland contains but 16 miUions, instead of above 20 mUlions, of English acres in- THE IRISH LAND QUESTION. 9 eluding lakes and waste land. The agrarian details, however, were evidently noted with the greatest care, and may probably be taken as a very near approach to the real facts. Sir Wil- liani Petty estimates the whole population of Ireland at 1,100,000, of whom he reckons 800,000 as Catholics and 300,000 as Protestants. The latter, as he points out, were then concentrated for the most part in the towns and a few of the northern counties ; so that, in the rural, districts gene- rally, the Catholics, according to his computation, were as twenty to one. On the other hand, he calculates that at " Christmas 1672," above two-thirds of all the good land in Ire- land was in the hands of Protestants or the Chiirch, whereas before 1641 two-thirds had belonged to " the Irish," and one- third only to "the English.'' Three million acres and up- wards of good land had previously been assigned " to the Protestants, planted by Queen Elizabeth and King James ;" indeed, the forfeited estates of Desmond alone are said to have amounted to nearly one million ; and, upon the whole, it may safely be inferred that at least half of the rent-producing land of Ireland had changed proprietors in the course of a century. It is well known that Ireland was then essentially a grazing country, but it is certainly startling to find that less than 800,000 acres were arable, against some 11,000,000 acres in pasturage for cattle and sheep ; while a fourth, if not a third, of the whole population were " spare hands," in the opinion ot Sir William Petty. He values all the land in Ireland, bad and good together, at no more than £9,000,000, and its rental at £900,000 ; remarking, moreover, that in 1653, when it was at the lowest point of depreciation, the whole island might have been purchased for one million sterling. No material change seems to have been wrought in the usual system of land-tenure by these successive waves of confiscation. AH landlords, whether the descendants of Irish chiefs, or settlers from England and Scotland, now held 10 THE lEISH LAND QUESTION. directly from the Crown, subject to all the rules of English law. The great majority of tenants, whether English or Irish, were still tenants-at-will. The utmost pains had been taken in the reign of James I. to introduce greater security of tenure, but with little success. Not only was express provision made in the settlement of Ulster for the concession of leases to under-tenants at moderate rents, but the same precautions were observed in accepting surrenders from Irish lords and regranting the estates on new titles. Sir John Davies considered it a great hardship and injustice that in the grants of Elizabeth "no care was taken of the inferior septs of people," and " there was but one freeholder made in a whole country, which was the lord himself." He describes particularly the plan adopted under the commissions of James I., which he fondly imagined would be effectual — how "there hath ever been a special care to settle and secure the under-tenants, to the end there might be a repose and establishment of every subject's estate — lord and tenant, freeholder and farmers, throughout the kingdom " — and how, after the demesne lands in the lords' own possession had been marked off, " the lands which are found to be possessed by the tenants are left unto them, respectively charged with certain rents only, in lieu of all uncertain Irish exactions." There is great reason to doubt whether these benevolent intentions were ever carried into full effect even in Ulster, and whether the so-called Ulster tenant-right does not date from a much later period. At all events, we find that English landlords contuaued to prefer Irish tenants, because they were less exacting, and, as appears from a striking passage in the Political Anatomy, were too often quite indifferent to security of tenure. " It is their interest," urges Sir WilUam Petty, "to deal with the English for leases for time, and upon clear conditions, which being performed they are absolute freemen, rather than to stand always liable to the humour THE lEISH LAND QUESTION; 11 and caprice of their landlords, and to have everything taken from them which he pleases to fancy." At the same time we have a strong proof, in the same work, as well as in the Beport from the CouTicil of Trade, that a tenant's improve- ments were then regarded as his own property, and not as the property of his landlord. In calculating the annual value of Irish land for state purposes, the author specially deducts a sum of £216,000, or nearly one-fourth of the whole, for "the henefit of leases, and the value of tenants improve- ments upon the said lands ; '' and, making a further deduction for tithes and king's quit-rents, sets down the residue only (£432,000) « for the landlords." Upon the whole, it is tolerably clear that in Sir William Petty's time, whatever vicissitudes had befallen Irish land- lords, Irish tenants, as a body, had made a considerable advance out of the almost nomadic state in which they were described by Spenser and his contemporaries. Not a few of them, indeed, were representatives of old Irish families — once lords of the soil — and retained in their hearts, as Sir WiUiam Petty testifies, "not only a grudging to see their old proprieties enjoyed by foreigners, but a persuasion they shall be shortly restored." Others were the descendants of those peasant occupiers whose rights of ownership, as we , have already seen, were secured in some degree by the Brehon law. Whatever loss may have been sustained by the former class, the latter can scarcely have suffered by the conversion of Irish into English tenures. Much has been said of the privileges attaching to aU whose names were inscribed on the sept-roll, and some have maintained in effect that it was the intention of the Stuart monarchs to commute these privileges for those of copyholders in manors. The proof of this alleged intention appears very inadequate, and there is far better evidence to show that undertakers retained more Irish tenants and brought in fewer English than was sane- 12 THE IRISH LAND QUESTION. tioned hj their patents. In the meantime, we must beware of idealising the Irish tenures which the English tenures dis- placed. "We must not compare the one as they might have been with the other as they were ; but remember that if the poor clansman had something in common with a peasant^ proprietor, he had still more in common with a villein. IV. Another century elapsed, and Ireland was again visited by a sagacious English observer, who has delineated its con- dition with the hand of a master. Arthur Young's Tour in Ireland, published a year or two after the Wealth of Nations, contains the first account of Irish land-tenure on which an economist can fully rely, and is by no means obsolete as an agricultural review of the country. During the interval be- tween the reigns of Charles II. and George III. a social revolu- tion had passed over it. The estates forfeited after the wars of William III. are said to have amounted to about 1,700,000 acres, and although nearly 700,000 were restored, this super- vening on three previous confiscations left but a fraction of Ireland, estimated at one-sixth or one-seventh, in the hands of Catholic landowners. The penal laws, however, which disabled Catholics from acquiring freehold property, or even holding leases for more than thirty-one years, or at less than two-thirds of a rack-rent, had a far greater effect on the posi- tion of the occupying tenantry than any mere transfer, however violent, of the fee-simple. Their operation was cruelly aggra- vated by the policy which destroyed the native manufactures of Ireland, and threw its whole population on the land at the very time when commercial prosperity was promoting the consoHdation of holdings in England. Under these laws, wMle the proportion of Protestant to CathoHc proprietors was ever on themcrease, CathoHc farmers inevitably lost all independence, and, sinking lower and lower in the social scale, became tenants-at-will, or, still worse, cottier tenants, not of Protest- THE IKISH LAUD QUESTION. 13 ant landlords, but too often of Protestant middlemen. The growth of this class — ^the curse of Ireland for several genera- tions — may he traced directly to causes which reached their maturity at the end of the seventeenth century, and bore their fruit in the eighteenth. The first of these causes was the absenteeism resulting from the substitution of an English for an Irish proprietary. Of all the adventurers, undertakers, and colonists, to whom grants of Irish land had been made, the Cromwellian settlers seem to have taken mostkindlyto Ireland, and rooted themselves most deeply in the soil Among the rest, many were great English noblemen, or mercantile bodies, who never thought of actually living in Ireland, or soon q[uitted it for a more agreeable residence. We have no positive means of judging how far the practice of absenteeism had extended in Charles II.'s reign, though Sir William Petty, who defends it by very sophistical arguments, hypothetically assumes one-quarter of Ireland to be owned by non-residents. At the beginning of the next century, however, we have overwhelming evidence that it was felt to be a national grievance. Swift is never tired of denouncing it, and declares that one-third, at least, of the whole rental of Ireland was yearly transmitted to England and spent there. He also speaks of the rack-rents mercilessly exacted by the middlemen, who, relieving the absentee landlord from the vexation of dealing with hundreds of petty occupiers, were virtually the land-agents of those days. OrigiaaUy it was common to grant beneficial leases of enormous length, if not in perpetuity, but afterwards three Hves, or thirty-one years, became the normal standard of a middleman's tenure. Men of this class were not always even resident ; they were seldom cultivators or skilled in farming, and their sole office was, in general, to screw out of the unhappy peasantry, whom they encouraged to multiply for their own advantage, a profit rent on which they could indulge, forsooth, "like 14 THE IRISH LAND QUESTION. gentlemen," in brutal carousing, reckless dueUing, and break- neck pastimes. The memorable passages in whxcb Arthux Young stigmatises them as " the vermin of the country, ' and relates how justice was perverted by squireen magistrates to screen acts of oppression committed by their own boon-com- panions, throw a flood of light on the agrarian history of Ireland. They are amply illustrated by contemporary literature, and they go far to explain both the poverty and the disaffection of Ireland at the present day. Most econo- mical evils have their countervailing advantages, but here the economical evil is aggravated beyond calculation by the social and political evil. " A set of gentry who, having no inheritance, no education, no profession, or other means of life than by getting between the inheritor and cultivator of the soU, grind the poor people to powder," never would have been tolerated in any coimtry less degraded than Ireland was, under the joint operation of foreign proprietorship and the penal laws. Another circumstance greatly favoured the baleful ascend- ency of middlemen, and the development of cottier-tenancy. Potato-cultivation, already noticed by Petty as a predisposing condition of Irish indolence, had now overspread the whole country and become the staff of life to Irish peasants. By encouraging subdivision and cutting up his land into small patches for potato-gardens, it was possible for the middleman to obtain a rent far higher than a few large farmers could have afforded to pay, or than any motive short of dire neces- sity could have extracted even from cottiers. There was, how- ever, one privilege attached to holdings of this class, which greatly enhanced their value. The cottier had usuaUy the right of pasturing cattle on the commons which abounded in Ireland until the reign of George III., and thus obtained a constant supply of milk, which renders a potato-diet com- paratively nutritious and wholesome. But iu the THE IRISH LAND QUESTION. 15 1759-61 two events occurred, which greatly increased the price of cattle and dairy produce, and made proprietors and middlemen look with grudging eyes on the poor man's right of pasturage. The first of these events was the act permitting the free importation of cattle from Ireland for a limited time ; the second was a murrain among cattle, like that which re- cently visited Great Britain. The "cow's grass" of the cottier was now taken away in many districts, and even his little plot of tillage land was sometimes appropriated also. The direct and immediate consequence was the sudden out- break of Whiteboyism, the origin and type of all agrarian outrage in Ireland from those days to our own. The name of " Levellers," under which the Whiteboys were first known, clearly indicates the principle of their association. They banded themselves together for the purpose of levelling the fences recently set up on common lands, and the grievance, which they too often revenged with hideous cruelty, is still most keenly felt by the poor in Donegal and elsewhere. Arthur Young, who travelled in Ireland during the years 1776-9, declares he could not find a trace of Whiteboyism having existed before 1760, and the light reflected on it by subsequent experience strongly confirms his view of its nature. It marks the beginning of an age, unhappily not yet concluded, during which the Irish peasant-farmer has lost the old semi-barbarous ideal of personal allegiance and personal service to a landlord, without having acquired the independ- ence to bargain on equal terms for " security of tenure." The protest of Arthur Young against leases to middlemen is the more weighty because it is coupled with the most earnest recommendation of leases to cultivating tenants. Those who quote his authority for the fallacious statement that land tmder lease in Ireland is worse tilled than land held at will, shut their eyes to arguments in favour of leasing as clear as language can make them. " The meanest occupier to 16 THE IRISH LAND QUESTION. have a lease, and none shorter than twenty-one years, which I am inclined also to think is long enough for his advantage." Whereas Edmund Burke, in his Tracts on the Popery Laws, speaks of a thirty years' lease as "evidently no tenure upon which to build, to plant, to raise enclosures, to change the nature of the ground, to make any new experiment which might improve agriculture, or to do anything more than what may answer the immediate and momentary calls of rent to the landlord, and leave subsistence to the tenant and his family." Upon such a point, the opinion of an agriculturist may he pre- ferred by many to the opinion of a statesman, but on the policy of leasing to actual working farmers, the view of Arthur Young and Burke is essentially the same. This view, it is needless to say, was not adopted by Irish landlords ; on the contrary, a fresh impulse was given to the abuses of inter- mediate proprietorship and subletting, by causes which neither thenforesaw. Already, in 1 771, an Act had been passed enabling Eoman Catholics to hold reclamation-leases for sixty-one years. In 1777 Eoman Catholics were empowered to hold leases for any term under 1000 years, and in 1782 they became capable of acquiring freehold property. The extension of the 40s. fran- chise to Eoman Catholics, in 1793, incidentally gave a most important effect to these remedial enactments. Under this franchise, not only 40s. freeholders in the ordinary sense, but aU persons holding a lease at 40s. rent, for one or more lives, became entitled to a county vote. At that period no spirit of political independence had been awakened among the tenants, and the priests had not learned to measure their strength with the landlords. Eelying on an influence which they continued to exercise after the Union, till its spell was broken in the Clare election of 1828, the landlords, in an evH hour for them- selves, gi-anted leases indiscriminately, and with an utter dis- regard of aU economical laws. A new rapp r.f -jji .V L J X. ■ ^ ^ °* middlemen was thus created, who, m turn, underlet and subdivided their THE IRISH LAND QUESTION. 1*7 leaseholds with reckless improvidence, partly in order to gain pocket-votes, and partly in order to avail themselves of the " war-rents" which the abnormal price of agricultural produce alone enabled farmers to pay. The close of the Great War, in 1815, brought the inevitable collapse. Those mesne-tenants who had not become owners in fee were, for the most part, ruined, and from that day forward the class of middlemen no longer figures prominently in the history of Irish civilisation. After the severe lesson which they had received in the elec- tioneering campaign preceding Catholic emancipation, Irish landlords must have seen the folly of seeking to make political capital out of leases granted on principles the reverse of those advocated by Arthur Young. In 1829 the 40s. leasehold fran- chise was abolished, and with it the last motive for letting to middlemen, though some of the old leases did not expire till many years afterwards, and even so late as 1845 it was sup- posed that one-seventh of Ireland was under leases for lives, renewable for ever. But the mischief which had been wrought lasted much longer, and has not yet become exhausted. In the century which followed the wars of William III. the popula- tion of Ireland had about trebled itself ; ia the half-century which succeeded the fatal gift of the 40s. franchise, it had doubled itself again. This increase was justified by no cor- responding development of manufacturing industry or agri- cultural skill. The eight millions and a quarter who swarmed upon the land before the famine were probably worse fed, very little better housed, and far more deeply pauperised, than were the 1,100,000 of Sir William Petty's time. They were essentially the product of a vicious system which has gone far to bring leases into discredit, but which really had scarcely anything but the name in common with the system of agri- cultural leases in Great Britain. v. Such was the state of Irish land-tenure when it came c 18 THE IKISH LAND QUESTION. under the scrutiny of the Devon Commission in 1844. Their Eeport, and the admirable Digest of Evidence taken before them, officiaUy published two years later, are stiU the most complete repertory of materials on the whole subject, and subsequent inquiries have rather illustrated than superseded their results. The process of clearance had been going on for some time, and had just been stimulated by the enactment of a Poor Law, yet there were then more than 900,000 hold- ings in Ireland, above 500,000 of which were under ten acres each, and the average size over all Ireland was but little above fifteen acres. What proportion of these farms were under lease was not, and perhaps could not be, ascertained by the Commissioners, who simply recorded their belief that most of the land was occupied by tenants-at-will. They found that " fixity of tenure " was already a popular watchword, and that insecurity of tenure was represented as a pressing grievance by all classes of tenants. Their own conclusion upon this part of the case is stated with greater caution than may appear necessary in the present more advanced state of public opinion, but it fully coincides with the views of Spenser and Davies, of Sir William Petty and of Arthur Young. They consider " that, as a general system, it is more for the interest of both landlord and tenant that leases should be granted," but they forbear to recommend direct Parliamentary inter- ference in favour of leases. On the other hand, after review- ing the whole question of tenants' improvements, and admit- ting the expediency of compensation for them being secured by voluntary agreements, they submit " that some legislative measure will be found necessary in order to give efficacy to such agreements, as well as to provide for those cases which cannot be settled by private arrangement." They even sug- gest the outHne of a measure for this purpose, empowering tenants to serve their landlords with notice of intended im- provements, strictly limited in their nature, to obtain a certi- THE IRISH LAND QUESTION. 19 ficate of their propriety and maximum cost, and to recover compensation on eviction to that extent, not exceeding three years' rent. The great Irish famine, by far the worst of Irish famines since the reign of George II., and perhaps the worst that has visited modern Europe, immediately succeeded the publica- tion of this Eeport. It swept away thousands upon thou- sands of those peasants whose misery and whose patience are there graphically described ; it destroyed, as if by a sudden blast, all confidence in that crop on which hungry millions had depended for a bare subsistence ; it powerfully aided the policy of clearance, and was the first source of the voluntary emigration which has never since ceased to flow westward ; it sealed the repeal of the Corn Laws ; it paved the way for the Encumbered Estates Court ; and it left an indelible mark on the whole agrarian condition of Ireland. Since the famine, wages have risen, mendicity has decreased, Indian meal and porridge, dear as they are compared with the former price of potatoes, have become staple articles of diet among the Irish poor ; and the one-roomed mud cabins, resembling the huts of savages, and little removed from the lairs of wild beasts, in which pigs, cattle, and poultry, lodge with the peasant's family, are dwindling away by degrees, though far indeed from extinct. Whether husbandry has kept pace with this im- provement in the labourer's comfort is more doubtful. Mr. James Caird, who visited Ireland in 1849 and again in 1869, observed less evidence of progress than he had expected. He saw little difference beyond that due to a simple diminution in the number of unemployed consumers. He noticed, in \ general, the same want of drainage and fences, the same exhaustion of the soil by farmers without capital or without the disposition to invest it in cultivation, and the same, if not a deeper, mistrust betweeb the landlord and tenant. In short, the greater part of the Devon Commission Evidence rnd Ee^ ' 20 THE IRISH LAND QUESTION. port is as applicable to Ireland now as it was twenty-five years ago. The chief exceptions are the passages depicting the misery of the labourer as distinct from the smaU farmer, and those which deal with farms of the very smaUest class, a vast number of which are now consolidated with others. In most other respects, it is truly marvellous how little modifica- tion is necessary in the grand survey of Ireland made by the Devon Commissioners. Side by side with this discouraging but trustworthy estimate of Irish agriculture, under conditions otherwise favourable to a rapid advance, we have one fact significant enough to be suggestive of a sufficient cause. In all its more important features, the law which governs the relations of landlord and tenant remains now what it was at the date of the Devon Commission, what it was at the date of Arthur Young's tour, what it was in the evil days which Sir William Petty vainly thought were ended, what it was when Sir John Davies helped to settle Ulster, and what it was in districts which obeyed the King's laws at aU during that period of confusion and almost universal rebellion, of which Spenser witnessed the apparent close. Those relations have been affected incidentally by the Irish Poor Law and many other acts of legislation, but their legal basis remains essenti- ally unchanged. There has been no want of inquiry, but it has led to nothing. Not to go farther back than 1825, " the defective state of the law between landlord and tenant " was earnestly pressed upon the attention of the Legislature by select committees of both Houses. In 1830, and again in 1832, the same grievance was recognised by committees of the House of Commons ; and since 1835 it has been the subject of more legislative failures than any other question of the day. A list of these is given in an official memorandum, prepared by Dr. W. N. Hancock in 1860. "Mr. Sharman Crawford, in conjunction with different members of ParHa- THE IRISH LAND QUESTION. 21 ment, introduced bills on the subject in 1835, 1836, 1843, 1845, 1846, 1847, 1848, and in 1852. On Mr. Crawford retiring from Parliament, the subject was taken up by Ser- jeant Shee and Colonel Greville in November 1852, and in 1853 ; by Serjeant Shee and Mr. Pollard Urquhart in 1854 ; by Mr. Moore and Mr. Maguire in 1856 and in 1857 ; and by Mr. Maguire and The O'Donoghue in 1858." .... "The number of ministerial bills is no less remarkable. They are : Lord Stanley's in 1845 ; Lord Lincoln's in 1846 ; Sir William Somerville's first biU in 1848, and his second bill in 1850 ; and lastly, Mr. Napier's bill in 1852." This dreary list must now be extended by the addition of Mr. Chichester Fortes- cue's bill, introduced in 1866 ; Lord Naas' bill, introduced in 1867 ; besides those of Lord Clanricarde, Sir C. O'Loghlen, and other private members of Parliament, supported by the vol- uminous evidence taken before a House of Commons' Committee in 1865, and a House of Lords' Committee in 1867. But one Irish land-measure (though consisting of two distinct statutes) has actually passed into law during this long period of ex- pectation. The exception is the measure of Mr. Cardwell, in the statute-book of 1860, which, however, is admitted to have remained little more than a dead letter. It established, in- deed, the principle that settlements and trusts should no longer be allowed to stand in the way of equitable arrangements be- tween landlords and tenants ; and it gave tenants, making improvements with the landlord's consent, a substantial claim to compensation. But it provided so cumbrous and costly a machinery for carrying out these objects, that it has scarcely ever been set in motion. Even that part of it which authorised loans of money to landlords for purposes of im- provement, under the sanction of the Landed Estates Court, proved almost abortive, as the Chancery Settled Estates Act had proved before, and for a similar reason. In the mean- time, very large sums of money have been lent to landlords 22 THE IRISH LAND QUESTION. for the same piirposes, under the sanction of the Board of Works ; and it is sometimes alleged, as a grievance, that equal faciUties have not heen provided for the execution of improve- ments by tenant-farmers. VI. We are thus brought face to face with the Irish land question of 1870, and it becomes necessary to cast a rapid glance over the present aspect of the country. The whole surface of Ireland, exclusive of lakes and large rivers, amounts to 20,319,924 statute acres, being more than one-fifth in excess of Sir William Petty's estimate. About one-half of this total acreage is laid down in grass, and somewhat more than one- fourth is under tillage. A very small proportion is covered by woods, and more than four million acres are still "bog or waste." The number of separate holdings in 1868 was 594,441, and of these above half were of a size not exceeding fifteen acres. Only 1569 in all exceeded 500 acres, but these large farms, though representing but a fraction of the whole number, engrossed one-tenth of the whole area. It follows that fifteen or twenty acres may be taken as the size of a typical Irish farm. It is true that among the 50,000 holdings not exceed- ing one acre must be included the potato-gardens of cottiers, and that " accommodation-ground," occupied by small trades- men in the neighbourhood of towns, contributes to swell the aggregate of farms under five acres. Against this, however, must be set the enormous home-farms and model farms of enter- prising landlords, the grass farms of Meath let out by the season to graziers, and the sheep-farms of wild mountain districts, which mainlyconstitutethehigherclasses. Thefactthatnearly311,000 out of 594,441 holdings range between five and thirty acres is decisive as to the average, and the evidence of popular language i^ Ireland amply confirms this estimate. A farm of five acres would still be caUed a small farm, and a farm of more than thirty acres would be caUed a large farm, in most parts of the THE IRISH LAND QUESTION. 23 country, thougli it is certain that a gradual process of consoli- dation has been going on for many years past. The smallest holdings of all, being those attached to labourers' cottages, have increased by 25 per cent since 1861, but the number of farms between one acre and five acres is always on the decrease. Since 1841 it has declined over aU Ireland by 75 per cent, and in the province of Connaught by upwards of 82 per cent. The representative Irish farmer, then, is a man holding some fifteen or twenty acres of land, including several acres of rough pasturage for the cows of which the poorest Irish fanuly generally manages to keep one or two, with very humble pretension to breed, yet frequently yielding a large supply of milk. Sometimes the little farm lies compactly round its steading ; more often it is scattered about in irregular patches, or stretches in a long narrow strip from a hUlside down towards a stream or marshy bottom. It is tilled by the farmer himself, with the aid of his sons or nephews, and occasionally of an obliging neighbour, but, in most cases, without recourse to hired labour. The degree of agricultural skUl which may be applied to it varies of course in different localities ; but, upon the whole, it is probable that Irish farming is more productive than is generally supposed. Potatoes are even now the main sub- sistence of an Irish household, and, precarious as this crop is, there is no other which yields so large an amount of nourish- ment, with the addition of milk, off a given plot of land. Flax is undoubtedly grown in the north at too short intervals, and with little care to repair the exhausted energies of the soil ; but the profit of a good season is so large as to cover many risks of subsequent loss. The unduly frequent succession of white crops, the preference of wheat to oats at elevations unfavourable to the former, and the neglect of house-feeding, are faults too characteristic of Irish agriculture ; and it is a fixed rule with many of the smaller 24 THE IKISH LAND QUESTIOlT. .„ . , Af tlip same time, farmers never to buy artificial manure. At tne Ume and seaweed are freely used where they are procurable. The most is made of every blade of grass that springs up under the corn; and a variety of petty shifts, dictated by necessity, make up in some degree for the want of capi al judiciously invested, which strikes the eye of observers like Mr Caird, accustomed to see farming carried on Uke a manufacturing enterprise-. Whatever political economy or the experience of Great Britain might lead us to expect, the fact remains that fifteen-acre or ten-acre farmers in Ireland pay a somewhat higher rent than larger farmers with at least equal punctuality, and save money enough besides, not only to defray the priest's dues, but to give their daughters considerable portions, and to keep deposits in banks, which, it is said, often lay them out in loans to farmers in Scot- land. The secret of this conflict between theory and practice lies partly in the incredibly low standard of expenditure among the Irish population. If the occupiers of ten or fifteen acres send little to market, they buy hardly anything, and put up with lodging which no English labourer would endure for a week. Pigs and fowls have a prescriptive right of entrance to real Irish cabins ; but it is also common enough to see the litter of a horse or cow beside the bed of its owner. Yet it would be a great mistake to imagine that a family which is thus content to herd together with animals must be otherwise deficient in self-respect or intelligence. On the contrary, the morality and shrewdness of the Irish tenantry are acknowledged by all who are intimately acquainted with them. In their ideas of domestic comfort, indeed, they retain traces of the primitive state from which they emerged so late, and this alone is a strong reason for not discouraging the civilising influence of landlords. Whether that influence is inconsistent with greater security of tenure and greater political independence, is one of the questions which now await a practical solution. THE IRISH LAND QUESTION. 25 It is needless to say that, in general, the Irish tenant- farmer holds not only without lease, but without any written agreement, nominally at will, but really from year to year, by virtue of a well-known legal presumption. So different, however, is the practice on different estates, and in different parts of the country, that very conflicting estimates have been formed of the actual proportion between leaseholds and tenancies-at-wiU in Ireland. The Devon Commissioners con- tented themselves with the surmise that a majority of tenants were tenants-at-will, and several of the witnesses examined before the House of Lords' Committee in 1867 spoke of leases as quite exceptional ; but whether only five per cent or as many as thirty per cent of Irish farms were held under lease, is still a matter of dispute. Nothing can be affirmed with precision on this subject before the publication of the statistics now being collected, through the Poor-Law authorities, by the present Government. In the meantime, the basis of an ap- proximate calculation may be obtained, indirectly, by a com- parison of the holdings above £15 in annual value, with the number of persons qualified as jurors by virtue of leasehold interests above the same annual value. After making proper deductions for double holdings on the one hand, and possible disqualifications on the other, we arrive by this method at the result that little more than one-tenth of the larger farmers in Ireland now hold under lease. The proportion must certainly be less among the smaller farmers, and it is notorious that, in counties like Donegal, where {h& petite culture is almost universal, leases are very seldom granted. We may safely assume then, provisionally, that not above one-tenth, at most, of working Irish farmers are leaseholders, though it is highly probable that far more than one-tenth of the whole area of Ireland is in the hands of this minority. There is little doubt that during the last thirty years, and especially during the last ten years, the system of tenancy-at-will has been gaining and not losing ground. 26 THE IRISH LAND QUESTION. The Devon Commissioners noticed a growing indisposition to grant leases ; and the evidence taken before them, as weU as that taken before later Parliamentary Committees, enables us to understand why they have become rarer and rarer. In former times, as we have seen, estates were managed through middlemen holding beneficial leases, instead of through agents paid by a salary. When the landlords realised the ruinous consequences of this practice in stimu- lating over-population, and when the importance of checking pauperism was further brought home to them by a Poor Law, they ran blindly into the opposite extreme, and would not grant leases even to cultivating tenants with capital to invest. A desire to exercise political influence over those whose votes were no longer the landlord's property, furnished a new and very powerful motive for the same policy ; nor has this motive by any means ceased to operate. But, apart from this, many benevolent landlords maintain that, without the power of eviction, it would be impossible for them to carry out schemes of improvement, or even to prevent the peasant- farmers on their estates from relapsing into barbarism. They aUow that such a power is capable of great abuse, and is sometimes greatly abused ; still, they regard it as one which, on the whole, conduces to the good of the community, and could not be superseded effectually by statutable covenants, or any like security against sub-letting and wasteful cultiva- tion. They allege the irrelevant precedents of middlemen's leases, or leases granted by corporations, to prove that leases are absolutely prejudicial to forethought and energy on the part of tenants, and they complain that, in case of litigation, a landlord has no chance of justice from- a common Irish jury. A lease, they say, is essentially a one-sided agreement ; it binds the landlord, who carries it out conscientiously, though it be to his own hurt ; it fails to bind the tenant, who is always seeking and discovering modes of evading it. They THE IRISH LAND QUESTION. 27 frequently add, with some inconsistency, that most tenants prefer to hold without leases, objecting to the expense, and dreading the inevitable valuation at the commencement and expiration of the term. At all events, they continue, it would be unreasonable to expect landlords to part with the control of their property at a time when revolutionary theories of tenant-right are abroad, and when concessions, possibly dictated by generosity, may be construed into acknowledg- ments of adverse claims. Such are the ordinary arguments advanced by modern Irish landlords in defence of tenancy-at-will, and they are not destitute of a certain logical force. The conclusive reason for condemning it is to be found in the present agrarian condition of Ireland, and in the existence of an Irish land question which taxes statesmanship to its utmost. That condition, and the question which arises out of it, are the legitimate Nemesis of a precarious occupancy, perpetuated, and even extended, in defiance of warnings from the age of Spenser to the age of Petty, from the age of Petty to the age of Arthur Young, and from the age of Arthur Young to our own day. And not only has it been perpetuated, but it has been perpetuated for the most part upon the footing of traditional usage and tacit un- derstandings that were never understood, by verbal assurances of successive agents to successive generations of occupiers, without the safeguard of a written contract or any periodical balancing of accounts between landlord and tenant. Had the far-sighted plans of Elizabeth and James been carried into effect, had the unanimous advice of the statesmen and econo- mists who have studied Ireland during the last three centuries prevailed over the blind instincts of self-interest, " fixity of tenure " could hardly have become the war-cry of tenant-right in the present year, Tenancy-at-will, stereotyped by custom into a system of " embryo copyhold," yet impressed by law with a liability to an indefinite increase of rent or arbitrary 28 THE IRISH LAND QUESTION. eviction, is the mother of the demand for perpetual fixity of tenure. It is because Irish landlords have been unwilling to grant a reasonable security of occupation, on the basis of con- tract, that indefinite claims of occupation for ever, on the basis of status, have now shaped themselves into an agrarian petition of right, supported by a powerful organisation in every county of Ireland. We cannot do justice to this movement, or appreciate the grievances, real and imaginary, to which it owes its origin, without placing ourselves once more in the position of an ordinary Irish farmer holding some fifteen or twenty acres of land. Let us endeavour, then, to realise the lot of such a man, and to interpret the feelings which underlie his fierce hatred of landlordism. We shall afterwards be far better able to appre- ciate the various projects of remedial legislation which have been laid before the public. The representative Irish farmer was born upon the land which he cultivates, if not in the cabin which he inhabits. Perhaps his ancestors, in far-off times, were entered on the sept-roU as possessors of this very plot, which has been tenanted ever since by his family, though repeated confisca- tions may have effaced the memory of its superior lords before the last century, and its last purchaser may have acquired it under a sale in the Encumbered Estates Court. Perhaps it was painfully won from the adjoining waste by his father or himself, either in the capacity of a mere squatter, or under a verbal arrangement with the agent that no rent should be exacted for a certain number of years. However this may be, and whether its present occupant inherited it or reclaimed it by his own industry, all that has made it a home for him was created by himself or his kindred, nor is it possible for him to regard it as the sole property of a stranger. Every piece of stone-work upon it, from the rude homestead to the meanest shed or byre, was erected by himself or his THE lEISH LAND QUESTION. 29 forefathers, every fence or enclosure was made by them, every field cleared and roughly drained by them, nor is there any visible sign of proprietorship other than his own, unless it be the occasional presence of an agent who is chiefly known to him as a collector of rent. His rent is not high, it is true, being little above the government valuation, and far less than some insolvent and reckless neighbour would under- take to pay if the farm were put up for competition. His landlord, too, is a kind-hearted man, in his way, never raising a tenant's rent twice in one lifetime, and willing to make abatements ia hard seasons, but seldom resident, and cut off from his sympathy by the iron barriers of race and religion. The genial influence of a good English sc[uire, who devotes himseK to county business, takes an interest in the parish school, directs his own improvements, and visits his labourers' cottages, is something of which he cannot even conceive. No one ever threatened him with eviction, or informed him directly that in such a case he must not look for compensation. The idea of eviction and its consequences, however, is always present to his mind, and he knows weU that if he were turned out by a new proprietor with a passion for consolidation, he would have no alternative but the workhouse or banish- ment. He remembers that, after the great famine, scores of little cabins disappeared from the mountain-side opposite, and that nothing was ever heard again of their former inmates. It has been reported to him that in the next county vast graz- ing-farms have been formed out of holdings like his own, and that the experiment has been financially successful. He read only the other day a paragraph in the newspapers advertising for sale just such an estate as his landlord's, and describing it as greatly under-rented and suitable for pasture. He is aware, indeed, that here and there a good landlord compelled to part with a portion of his property has granted leases beforehand to old tenants, and thereby protected their 30 THE lEISH LAND QUESTION. T, „^ T5ut lie believes equitable rights against the purchaser. -Duu , A Ac,vp? 9,000 George Watson's » 6,500 John Watson's „ » 4,500 Stewart's „ jj 3,200 iE39,700 Deducting from this total sum say £4700 per annum for the nine affiliated schools belonging to Heriot's Hospital, there will remain a revenue of at least £35,000 a-year, and four great architectural edifices, as educational means and appliances to be turned to account. We say four edifices, because the building of George Watson's Hospital has lately been sold as a site for the Infirmary for £45,000. This amount, then, will have either to be re-expended in fresh architectural display, or it may be capitalised, and £1800 per annum may be added to the estimated revenues of the George Watson trust. It will at once be seen how much this latter circumstance adds to the facility of action of the trustees j nothing could have been more fortunate than such an occur- rence at the present moment. The present result produced by these five great hospitals, with their architectural edifices and their joint available revenues of £35,000 per annum, is that they maintain and educate altogether about 620 children, at an annual cost of £56 per head, and that the education received by these children, being barely above primary instruction, is just 136 THE ENDOWED "HOSPITALS" OF SCOTLAND. enough to qnalify them for being apprentices and assistants in shops, — ^which situations they are apt to enter upon con- siderably dulled beforehand, both in mind and spirit, by the operation of the monastic system. Heriot's Hospital was to be founded in imitation of the Blue-Coat School in London. But nothing is more characteristic of the Blue-Coat School than the careftd way in which it is graded, so that a boy can either move up by merit into the dignity of a " Grecian," remaining at school, under the highest classical instruction, tni eighteen years of age, when he is sent with an exhibition to Oxford or Cambridge ; or else, if he fails at any poiat to win his way up, he diverges iuto the mathematical school, and is sent to sea at the age of fifteen, or into the commercial school, and is apprenticed at the same age to some trade or profession. Every one knows what illustrious scholars have come out of the ranks of the " Grecians" of Christ's Hospital, the chief beiag Coleridge, Charles Lamb, Bishop Middleton, and Mr. Maine, the author of Ancient Law. But the majority of boys admitted to a school of the kind are not the least qualified by nature to distinguish themselves as scholars. Their gifts lie in another direction ; and it is the merit of the graded system of Christ's Hospital that it constantly sifts the boys, and sends off those who cannot pass the finer tests, into practical pursuits, with useful instruction thereto apper- taining. "Why should not Heriot's School have followed its proto- type in this respect, and have become within itself a graded institution ? Its mn'e,;, affiliated schools gave the basis for commenciag this very arrangement. But the Governors have shut these nine schools, like pariahs, outside their gates. It would have been natural to draft in boys showing great merit and promise from these schools into the hospital, and indeed, to fill up the hospital in this way alone, just as all the boys admitted into Christ's Hospital in London go first to the THE ENDOWED "HOSPITALS" OF SCOTLAND. 137 Braxich Hospital in Hertford, and are drafted thence. But tlie nine schools attached in name to Heriof s have no con- nection with the hospital itself. The Governors have simply thrown a sum of money as a largess into the streets, instead of drawing the population within the pale and the influence of the hospital The nine schools have done good in their way, but they should now be improved — 1st, By the exaction, except in very remarkable cases, of a fee, however smaU; 2d, By organisation of instruction, by means of standards analogous to those of the revised code ; 3d, By a constant drafting of really superior pupils into a higher school within the walls of the hospital itself And from the hospital a certain number of the elite should be drafted at the age of fifteen into the Fettes College, the High School, or the Academy, thence to be transferred, after two years, with adequate bursaries, to the University. So much for the graded system, as applied merely to one of the great hospitals of Ediaburgh. But it surely ought to be applied to all of them, not only within themselves, but in relation to each other. Mr. Forster's principle ought surely to be attended to, and duplicates avoided, wherever one institution is sufficient for the performance of any particular function. But, it may be asked, how can this principle be carried out without some commission, or central board, to arbitrate in the matter ? The answer that occurs to us is, that the managing bodies might form their own commission or cen- tral board. At aU events, there is nothing absolutely impossible or absurd in the idea, that the different managing bodies might, at the present juncture, organise a conference upon this im- portant question. Each body might appoint its delegates, who should be instructed to confer with the delegates of the other Edinburgh hospitals, and to draw up in council with them a scheme in which the function of each hospital should 138 THE ENDOWED " HOSPITALS " OF SCOTLAND; be broadly defined. If any general scheme of this kind were once accepted by the separate governing bodies, the duties of the conference would be at an end, and each separate body of trustees would be left to carry out its own part in the scheme at its own responsibility. The conference of trustees would naturally propose to themselves for discussion, exactly those general questions of policy which a Eoyal Commission would be certain to deal with, such as the following : — 1st, Does not experience suggest that the " monastic," or asylum, system of boarding children within the hospitals should now, for the sake of the children themselves, be totally abolished, being superseded partly by exhibitions and bur- saries, partly] by the system of billeting, under due super- vision, in poor but respectable families 1 Many governors of hospitals already go the length of saying that they would only keep up boarding establishments for the sake of orphans. But the working of the Poor-Law system rather suggests that orphans are especially benefited by being billeted on families, in which they often strike root as it were, and make new friends for themselves by gaining the affections of those with whom they are placed. "Why should orphans be particularly selected to be mewed up, and made more soft, dull, and help- less than others, as they must necessarily be by the monastic system ? 2d, Should not the grounds of eligibility for admission to hospitals be reconsidered t At present we find them stated as follows : — To Heriot's Hospital are admissible sons of Edinburgh burgesses. To George Watson's Hospital, sons or grandsons of mer- chants, burgesses, or guild-brothers. To John Watson's, fatherless children of respectable parents. THE ENDOWED "HOSPITALS" OF SCOTLAND. 139 To Donaldson's, poor children, with a preference for the names of Donaldson or Marshall To Stewart's, sons of poor but respectable parents in Edin- burgh and Leith, preference being given to Stewarts and Macfarlanes. We see, then, that the third and fourth of the above insti- tutions are open without restriction of locality or parentage ; that the fifth has a local restriction to Edinburgh and Leith ; and that Heriot's and George Watson's are close foundations in favour of the burgesses and merchants of Edinburgh. One is always glad to refer Heriot's Hospital to the ex- ample of its prototype in London. Christ's Hospital was once close to the freemen of the City of London, but now it is open to all persons, whether coimected or not with the city ; which fact may afford food for reflection to the gover- nors of Heriot's. Now, supposing that each of the five great hospitals maintained a feeder for itself in the shape of a large primary school or schools, open to all persons on the payment of a small fee, and that admission to hospital privileges* were obtainable on open competition solely by merit and promise exhibited within the feeding schools, would not a greater benefit be conferred on the community than is conferred by the present close and pauperising system ? And we may add, would not local interests be at the same time, to a certain extent, favoured ? Would not aU those living on the spot have an advantage in the superior facility of sending their children to compete in the feeding schools ? Sd, The third great question which a conference of hospital trustees would have to decide, would be the question of the division of labour. This question would best be ap- * i.e. In certain cases to maintenance in the houses of respectable families, and in aU cases to instruction in the graded schools of the hospital, with the opportunity of rising to University education and the liberal professions, or, failing this, to a fair start in some ti'ade or employment. 140 THE ENDOWED "HOSPITALS" OF SCOTLAND. proached by considering beforehand Wbat are the possibilities? It has often been observed that the weak point of public instruction in Scotland is want of organisation, and this pro- ceeds from want of definition. Different grades of instruction — ^primary, secondary, and higher — are run together and con- fused, and the result has been that secondary and higher in- struction have suffered. In the present case, hospital trustees would do well to begin with a little definition for the sake of clearness. The different kinds of instruction possible to be supported from hospital funds may perhaps be enumerated as follows: — (1) Eagged School or Eeformatory ; (2) Primary, up to say the third standard of the Eevised Code ; (3) Superior Primary, including geography and history, and the elements of Latin ; (4) and (5) Lower Secondary, being the first part (from ten to fourteen years of age) either of a classical or of a commercial education, and being thus divisible into (4) Lower Classical, and (5) Lower Commercial ; (6) Trade or Technical (from ten to fourteen or fifteen years of age), thus running parallel to Lower Secondary ; (7) and (8) Superior Secondary, being either (T) High Classical, in immediate pre- paration for the University, or (8) High Commercial, to be afterwards described. By taking this or some other classification of the grades and departments of school teaching, hospital trustees might see their way more definitely in fixing their future course. Many persons are of opinion that (1) Eagged Schools would be a fitting object for the expenditure of some of the hospital funds. Of the importance of such schools no one can doubt. Edinburgh is fairly furnished with them already ; but if on inquiry it appears that a supplementary institution of the kind is stiU. required, then an assignment of £1500 or £2000 a^year from the fimds of some one hospital for this purpose would probably suf&ce. A Eagged or Industrial School might be set up, bearing the name of the founder from whose " morti- THE ENDOWED "HOSPITALS" OF SCOTLAND, 141 fication" the funds were drawn (perhaps John "Watson's, as the most appropriate) ; and such a school would surely, both as a boon to the city and as a benefit to individual poor, be well worthy of the benevolent, though often vague,* intentions of hospital founders. Lower Primary Education (2) would naturally be provided for separately by each hospital, if the suggestion above made were adopted, and feeding schools of this grade were estab- lished, from which admission to the superior benefits of the hospitals would be attainable by merit alone. The organisa- tion of such schools would be a simple matter, and would be left for the managing bodies severally to carry out. Lower Primary Education being completed outside the hospital walls, picked children would be admitted from the feediag schools, in some cases to a maintenance in respectable families, and in aU cases to one or more of the grades of instruction enumerated, within the hospital buildings, which would now perhaps be entirely devoted to teaching, and not to boarding purposes. Probably all the hospitals would agree in keeping np within their walls a class or school in (3) Superior Primary Instruction. And from these classes or schools the pupHs would be drafted off, according to their respective abilities, circumstances, and inclinations, into schools in (4) Lower Classical, (5) Lower Commercial, and (6) Trade or Technical Education. * In tlie year 1759, John Wafson, writer to the Signet, bequeathed the residue of his estate to certain trustees, hy them to be applied " to such pious and charitable uses within, the city of Edinburgh as they shall think proper. '' By a deed, dated 1764, they destined the revenue of the property to "the pious and charitable purpose of preventing child-murder, by an hospital within the city of Edinburgh for recevomg secretly infant children, cmd bringing them up to he useful members of soeiety, cmd by receiving privately women big with child, cmd assisting them in their delivery, so as to conceal their shame, and taking ca/re of their children as foundlings ." From doubts of the expediency of such an Institution, the terms of the deed were never carried out, and in 1822 an Act of Parliament was obtained empowering the trustees to establish an hos- pital for the maintenance and education of destitute children. 142 THE ENDOWED "HOSPITALS" OF SCOTLAND. At this point, then, the division of labour between different hospitals would first commence. It would be against the laws of economy to have duplicates, within so limited an area, of special schools, which by hypothesis would be intended only for picked pupils. The main business of allotting sepa- rate functions, and of arranging terms of co-operation, would now begiu for the Hospital Trustees' Conference. They would have to consider the conditions of some mutual arrangement by which picked pupils from the Superior Primary class in one hospital might be admitted into the Special School in another hospital. Afterwards the branches or departments of instruction would be distributed. Probably some one hospital (shall we say Daniel Stewart's?) would be able sufficiently to provide for (4) Lower Classical Education ; the best pupils under which would be drafted off, at the age of fourteen or fifteen, to (7) Higher Classical, and the remaiader would be sent out into situations such as at present fall to the lot of hospital boys in general. But it would remaiu a question for the Conference whether (7) Higher Classical instruction should be undertaken by any one of the five hospitals under discussion, or whether this department should not rather be left to the Pettes College, the High School, and the Edinburgh Academy, to either of which the Mte of the hospital boys might be sent, with exhi- bitions, for a couple of years, preparatory to proceediag, at the age of sixteen or seventeen, with bursaries, to the University. By the exhaustive process, there remain to be dealt with only (5) Lower Commercial, (6) Trade or Technical, and (8) High Commercial instruction. In order to show what is meant by Lower and Higher Commercial Education, we may quote from the Report of the French Commission on Technical Instruction (translated), 1868, the foUowiug passage :— Notwithstanding the existence in Paris of the Superior School of Commerce, and the laudable efforts which have been made, THE ENDOWED "HOSPITALS" OF SCOTLAND. 143 either in Paris under the influence of the Chamber of Commerce, or at Lyons, or in any other important centres of trade, commercial education is not sufficiently developed in France. It is most de- sirahle that this education should be more widely diffused, and that it should be constituted a special subject. In order to adapt it to the different social positions of the youths who devote themselves to trade, commercial education should be given in two degrees — one elementary, the other superior. The elementary instruction should comprise — Caligraphy. Arithmetic. Commercial Greography. Merchants' Accounts. Book-keeping. The Knowledge of Eaw Ma- terials and Manufactured Products. The French Language. Commercial Correspondence. The superior instruction, besides the preceding subjects, should include — Living Languages. Commercial Law. The Principles of Political Economy. Commercial History. Commercial Literature and Correspondence. The Comparative Prices of Purchase, Conveyance, Manufacture, and Sale. Banking, Exchange, Transac- tions on Account. The Custom Tariffs of France and Foreign Countries. Now, if for " the French language " in the above scheme of elementary instruction we substitute the words " the English language, including easy- Literature," and for "the custom- tariffs of France " write " of England," we shall have a draft outline (merely suggestive, it is true, and requiring much modification) for two grades of commercial schools, the one for boys from ten to fifteen years of age, the other, a smaller school for picked boys out of the former, from fifteen to seven- teen years of age. The function of a great "Elementary Commercial " school might be devolved, say on Heriot's Hos- pital, and that of maintaining a smaller school of "High Commercial" instruction might fall, not inappropriately, on George Watson's. There now only would remain to be dealt 144 THE ENDOWED "HOSPITALS" OF SCOTLAOT). with, (6) Trade or Technical Education, of which we may best give an idea by transcribing the following prospectus of the Bristol Diocesan Trade School : — " The design of this school is to prepare boys for apprentice- ship to the engineering, building, and manufacturiag trades, by supplementing the ■work of the elementary school with instruction in practical mathematics, and physical science in its application to trade. But while these higher subjects are taught, those which are more elementary receive a careful attention. The studies which form the school routine are : — Writing and book-keeping, the English language, arithmetic and algebra, geometry and mensura- tion ; free-hand, mechanical, and architectural drawing ; and the application of mechanics, physical science, and chemistry. " The following table wiU give an idea of the teaching in the upper division of the school : — lOtolOi- lOJtolli llitol2. 12 to 1. n to 24. 2| to 3i. Monday Scripture. English. Euclid. Inorganic Chemistry. Descriptive Geometry. Theoretical Mechanics. Tuesday . Ditto. Ditto. Algebra. Organic Chemistry. Machine Drawing. Applied Mechanics. Wednesday. Ditto. Ditto. Mensura- tion. Inorganic Chemistry. Architectural Drawing. Experimental Physics. Thursday . Ditto. Ditto. Euclid. Organic Chemistry. Descriptive Geometry. Applied Mechanics. Friday . . Ditto. Ditto. Algebra. Inorganic Chemistry. Machine Drawing. Theoretical Mechanics. Of course this prospectus merely gives a specimen, iadicating the sort of teaching in a trade school, the particular features of which could always be modified so as to suit local require- ments. A great trade school, on a carefully considered plan in direct reference to the chief industries of Scotland, would be a worthy application of the chief part of the revenues and of the palatial buildings of Donaldson's Hospital* It is re- ported of the Bristol Trades' School that * Donaldson's Hospital has, for some time past, contained within its walls THE ENDOWED "HOSPITALS" OF SCOTLAND. 145 " In order to extend still further the benefits of instruction in science, and to give the old pupils an opportunity of keeping up their knowledge after they have left school, the masters have established evening classes, of which the following is the pro- gramme : — Chemistry Tuesdays and Thursdays 8 tiU 9 Physical Science Tuesdays and Thursdays 7 „ 8 Geometrical Drawing Tuesdays - 7 „ 8 Machine Drawing - Tuesdays , 8 „ 9 Architectural Drawing Fridays - 8 „ 9 Free-hand Drawing Thursdays 7 „ 8 Model Drawing Thursdays 8 „ 9 Mathematics - Mondays and Fridays 7 „ 9 French, Elementary Mondays and Thursdays 7 „ 8 French, Advanced Mondays and Thursdays 8 „ 9 French, Middle Class Tuesdays and Fridays 7 „ 8 This plan of "evening classes" might be appropriately imitated in an institution such as Donaldson's Hospital might be made, and by this addition it would tend to become not oiily a technical school for apprentices, but also, to some extent, a "people's college" for the working classes of Edin- burgh. We have indicated, in the broadest outline, the sort of scheme which might be jointly agreed on by the trustees of the five great hospitals of Edinburgh. The result would come out somewhat as follows : — John Watson's Hospital to support a Primary Feeding School, and a superior Primary School with a claim for the a department for tie maintenance and education of pauper deaf-mutes. Such an asylum was not contemplated by tlie founder, but was introduced by the Governors under the very wide terms of Donaldson's will. A portion of the Governors are now favourable to the idea of extending the deaf-mute depart- ment, and of turning the Hospital entirely into a great Deaf and Dumb Asy- lum. The objections to this plan are — 1st. That such an institution is hardly wanted, as the other towns of Scotland have asylums of the kind. 2d. That, were the plan adopted, Donaldson's Hospital would be deprived of the con- spicuous position which it might otherwise hold in the organisation of Public Instruction. L 146 THE ENDOWED "HOSPITALS" OF SCOTLAlfD. admission of its picked pupils to the Classical, Trade, or Commercial Schools of the other hospitals ; also to support a Eagged or Industrial School, if such an institution be thought necessary ; also to set apart a certain sum for bUIet-allowances, exhibitions, and bursaries open to competition. Stewart's Hospital to support a Primary Feeding School, a Superior Primary School, and a Lower Classical School open to picked boys from aU the hospitals ; also to set apart bUlet-allowances, exhibitions, and bursaries. Heriot's Hospital to maintain its present nine Primary schools, but to reorganise these so as to be feeders to the hospital ; also a Superior Primary School, and a great Ele- mentary Commercial School, within its walls ; also to set apart billet-allowances, exhibitions, and bursaries, and sums to assist meritorious boys entering different branches of trade or commerce. George Watson's Hospital to maintain a Primary Feeding School, a Superior Primary School, and a High Commercial School for picked boys from Heriot's Elementary Commercial School ; also to set apart biHet-allowances, exhibitions, bur- saries, and allowances for outfit. Donaldson's Hospital to maintain a Primary Feeding School, a Superior Primary School, and a great Trade School, with the addition of evening classes for old pupils and adults ; also to set apart billet-allowances, exhibitions, bursaries, and apprentice-fees for meritorious students. We suppose all the hospitals to agree in the one point of abandoning the monastic system, and of substituting for it a system of maiutenance, allowances, exhibitions, and bursaries. By this course, the hospital revenues would be immensely economised, while the evils of a vicious system of charity would be removed. The foUowing diagram indicates a division of subjects of instruction between the five great hospitals of Edinburgh, when graded in relation to one another : — s .11 i- ;£ «k5 CO s „ 1'« ^ 03 4. U °!2 "8^ ft? 148 THE ENDOWED "HOSPITALS" OF SCOTLAND. Before leaving, however, the above suggestions to the con- sideration of trustees, it may, perhaps, be well to anticipate as far as possible two prima facie objections which might be urged against them — namely, First, that founders' intentions have been throughout disregarded ; Second, that it would be absurd, or undesirable, to institute anything like competition among children of tender age at a primary school To these objections we would answer, first, confidently, that the founders of Edinburgh " hospitals," had remarkably general and undefined purposes of doing good, and that a scheme like that suggested would not be in any point at variance with the spirit of their bequests ; second, that by competition in the feeding schools, we only mean that the masters of those schools should send up the most promising pupils (they might be aU the upper classes) annually, to the superior primary schools within the hospitals, and from these latter schools boys would be selected, according to their abilities, between the ages of nine and eleven, for training in classical, commercial, or technical education. By " competition," then, we do not mean anything like the examination for an Indian civil service appointment, but only that the masters should pick out the boys most likely to benefit by instruction in particular branches. But the whole scheme is not given as anything cut and dried, but merely as a specimen of the sort of co-ordinate arrangement which the hospital trustees of Edinburgh might aim at. These trustees have performed notable achievements as husbanders and investors of funds, as builders of stately edifices, and as beautifiers of their city. But it must be con- fessed that as educationists they have hitherto failed. It is to this part of their duty — the turning to educational account the fimds which they have so well kept and augmented — ^that they must now address themselves. They wUl do so with every facility afforded them by the Legislature, but they will THE ENDOWED "HOSPITALS" OF SCOTLAND. 149 need to employ greater versatility of mind, and more of the ideas belonging to the modern science of education, than they have hitherto exhibited. The Endowed Institutions (Scotland) Act has reference to many other " hospitals " and schools besides those in and near Edinburgh. Such are Gordon's Hospital at Aberdeen, Hut- cheson's in Glasgow, Morgan's in Dundee, the endowed schools in Dollar, Eochabers, St. Andrews, Newton-Stewart, and others. Our space does not admit of these being treated of in detail. They do not afford an opportunity for a federated system, so conspicuously possible in the case of the Edinburgh hospitals. But Mr. Forster's principles are stm applicable to them severally, and should be applied. Scotland has long made a proud boast of being superior to England in the education of her lower orders. Every one knows Lord Macaulay's panegyric on this head. Perhaps the testimony of M. Biot, the celebrated Ereneh physicist, who resided for some time in Scotland, may not be equally well known. " The results of education," said M. Biot, " are such that they strike with astonishment those who observe them for the first time. A people divided by fierce civU wars, a prey to a host ol dififerent religious fanaticisms, imbued with gross superstitions, has been metamorphosed into a united, moral, religious, tolerant, and enhghtened nation. The Scotch, poor, and inhabiting a country by no means fertile, have risen by their education and civilisation to the level of, and, if the lower orders are considered, have surpassed a nation which is regarded as one of the most enlightened on the face of the earth. They have rivalled it in trade, eq^ualled it in manufactures, and surpassed it in agriculture. Wherever a Scotchman goes, the education he has received in the parish schools gives his mind a pecuhar power of observation, and enal^les him to extend his view far beyond the range of objects which occupy the attention of persons of the same social status who have not been so educated." 150 THE ENDOWED "HOSPITALS" OF SCOTLAND. These were brave words, and doubtless well merited. But a few years hence the question will be, " Stands Scot- land where it did?" in educational pre-eminence. Just now Scotland and England seem playing the parts of the hare and the tortoise. The hare is fast asleep, dreaming of her own speed. The tortoise is moving on. In England they have got the Endowed Schools Act, and the League is agitating in every large town for national education. Scot- land, in the meantime, allows the reform of her burgh schools to be postponed to the settlement of primary education, and, through apathy or ecclesiastical dissension, she lets every bill for primary education be shipwrecked in Parliament. She has allowed herself to be put off with a mere permissive Act for the improvement of her endowed institutions ; and it remains to be seen whether she is going to demand any real results from the powers given by that Act, or not. A. G. THE GEAPHIC EEPRESENTATION OF THE LAWS OF SUPPLY AND DEMAND, AND THEIR APPLICATION TO LABOUR. PAET I. Gkaphic Bepeesentation of the Laws of Supply and Demand. Eecent discussions on the laws determimng the price of commodities seem to show that these laws are neither so weU understood nor so clearly expressed in the writings of econo- mists as is sometimes supposed. Men are too much in the habit of speaking of the laws of political economy, without attaching to the word law the same rigid meaning which it bears in physical sciences. There are, however, some truths concerning the subjects treated by the economist which do deserve the name of laws, and admit of being stated as accu- rately, and defined in the same manner, as any mathematical laws affecting quantities of any description. The following essay is an attempt to state in this rigorous manner some propositions concerning the market price of commodities, using what is known as the graphic method of curves to illustrate the laws and propositions as they arise. First, I will consider what determines the price of a com- modity at a given time in a given market, and it is unfortii- nately necessary for this purpose to define the sense in which some words will be used. The whole supply of an article will be taken to mean the whole quantity of the article for sale there and then. Supply is in this sense mensurable, and can be expressed in tons, 152 GRAPHIC REPKESBNTATION OF quarters, etc. Supply at a price denotes the quantity which at a given price holders would be, then and there, willing to sell. Supply at a price is also mensurable. Demaiid at a •price denotes the quantity which, then and there, buyers would purchase at that price. The supply at a price and the demand at a price in any given market wiU probably vary with the price ; they may be said to be functions of the price. Let a curve be drawn, the abscissae of which represent prices, and the ordinates the supplies at each price. This curve will be called the supply curve. A similar curve, con- structed with the demand at each price as ordinates, will be called the demand curve. 80 Shillings. Fig. 1. — First Law of Supply and Demand. "Whole supply for sale at any price, 1400 quarters of wheat. Price at which whole supply would be sold, 90s. Price at which whole supply would he hought, 20s. Market price, 60s. Price helow which no sale could take place, 40s. Price ahove which no sale could take place, 62s. Quantity which will he sold, 800 quarters. Fig. 1 shows a pair of imaginary demand and supply curves for corn. At 60s. per quarter, the supply is 1000 quarters ; at 55s. the supply is 900 quarters; at 50s. only 800 quarters; at 45s. only 600 quarters; at 40s. the supply is nil. At 62s. the demand is nil ; at 55s. only 600 quarters ; at THE LAWS OF SUPPLY AND DEMAND. 153 50s. it is 800 quarters ; at 45s. 900 quarters ; at 40s. 1000 quarters ; and continues to rise fast at lower prices. The first law of demand and supply may now be stated as foUows : — Pkop. 1. In a given market, at a given time, the market price of the commodity will he that at which the supply and demand curves cut. This price is the price at which the supply and demand are equal. Corollary A. — At this price a greater quantity of the com- modity will change hands than at any other price. In practice, the supply and demand curves are unknown, but the price at which supply and demand are equal is ascer- tained approximately by competition in this wise — If some sellers offer their wares below the theoretical price, so many buyers present themselves, that the other sellers, not being afraid of having goods left on their hands, raise the price. If some sellers begin by offering their wares above the theoretical price, so few buyers present themselves, that others, fearing to have their goods left on their hands, undersell them. If some buyers offer less than the theoretical price, so few sellers are found that the same or other buyers raise their offers. If some bayers offer more than the theoretical price, so many sellers are found that the other buyers reduce their offers. The same effect is produced whether the buyers bid or sellers proffer first. The excess or defect of the supply over the demand at a price is inferred from the briskness of the sales, and is independent of the particular form in which transactions may take place. Thus the market price, as determined by the first law of supply and demand, is ascertained by competition. The law thus stated assumes that each man knows his own mind, that is to say, how much of his commodity he will 154 GKAPHIC EEPEESENTATION OF then and thetre sell or buy at each price, and that the condi- tion of his mind shall not vary. , If this he granted, then the market price will not be changed by the sales. The base line, as each quarter of wheat is sold, will then in our figure gradually ascend, until, when 800 quarters have been sold, it will have reached the position shown in Kg. 2, when no further sales will take place, but Fig. 3 ^^e- W/toTe si tppl'ij remaining wft, e n 6alejjinded_ 10 20 30 40 60 60 70 80 OOshfflings. Pio. 2.— Demand and Supply Curves after completion of sales Indicated in Fig. 1, -with- out change of market price. Whole supply at any price, 600 quarters. Price at which whole supply would be sold, 90s. Price at which whole supply would be bought, 20s. Market price, 50s. Price below which no sale would take place, 503. Price above which no sale can take place, 50s. Quantity which will be sold— ti^Z. the market price will, as before, be 50s., any increase finding sellers, any decrease buyers. If every man were openly to write down beforehand exactly what he would sell or buy at each price, the market price might be computed immediately, and the transactions be then and there closed. The actual price at which each quarter is sold will be a mere tentative approximation to the theoretical price. Bar- gainers all day long will be watching the market, to ascertain whether a given price is above or below that at which the quantity to be bought and sold will be equal But, in practice, men's minds do not remain constant for five minutes together, and we have found that only one point THE LAWS OF SUPPLY AND DEMAND. 155 ia the supply curve, viz. the highest, is independent of men's minds. The supply curve can never rise above the whole supply* but under this height it may vary almost indefinitely. Similarly, the demand curve has a limit, which in this case is a limit at each price. The funds available for purchase at any price are limited, and this, which may be called the purchase fund, at each price limits the possible demand ; but below this continuous limit the demand curve may in its turn vary indefinitely; and thus, while the whole supply in the market may be consta,nt, and the funds available to support demand may be constant, yet the market price of the com- modity may vary immensely, as men's minds vary. Assuming the two limits to be fized and constant, the following additional corollaries flow from the first law : — B. If the supply at a price increases at prices near the 80 90 Sbilllngs. Fig. 3.— Showing Changes in the Sapply Curve. If the supply curve ria^to the upper dotted line the market price will fall to 46s., and 900 quarters of wheat will change hands, instead of 800 as in Fig. 1. If the supply curve fall as shown by the lower dotted line the market price win rise to 65s., but only 600 quarters he sold. ihe whole supply, the price at which all would be sold or none sold, all bought or none bought, may all remain unaltered, as well as the demand curve. In practice some or all of these elements would generally vary when the supply curve varies. market price, as shown iu the upper dotted line (Fig. 3), prices fall, and more is sold. * Except in those cases where men sell what they have not got, tmstiug that before the time for deliveiy they may be able to secure a supply. 156 GEAPHIC EEPEESENTATION OF C. If the demand at a price increases at prices near the market price, as shown in the upper dotted line (Fig. 4), prices rise, and more is sold. 2000 r E" / 80 90 Sbillings. Fia. 4.— Showing Changes in the Demand Curve. If the demand curve rise, as in the upper dotted line, the market price will be 55s., and the quantity sold be 900 quarters. If the demand curve fall, as in the lower dotted line, the price will fall to 45s., and the quantity sold to 600 quarters. As in Fig. 3, the whole supply, the price at which all would be sold or none sold, all bought or none bought, is left unaltered, as well as the supply curve. In practice some or all of these elements would generally vary when the demand curve varies. B. If the supply at a price decreases at prices near the market price, as shown in the lower dotted line (Fig. 3), prices rise, and less is sold. E. If the demand at a price decreases at prices near the market price, as shown in the lower dotted curve (Fig. 4), prices fall, and less is sold. F. It is possible that both the demand at a price and supply at a price may increase simultaneously, so that the price shall be unaltered, while more of the commodity is bought and sold, or less of the commodity may change hands with an unaltered price, demand and supply decreasing simultaneously. These effects, and combinations of these effects, may occur, while the whole supply and purchase funds are both constant, nevertheless at each moment the first law of demand and supply holds good. THE LAWS OF SUPPLY AND DEMAND. 157 Let us next consider what will happen if the whole supply or whole purchase fund vary. Pkop. 2. If the -whole supply le increased, it will most fre- quently, hut not always, happen that the supply at a price will, throughout the whole scale, be increased ; prices will then fall, as shown in Fig. 5. If the purchase fund le increased it will often happen that the demand at a price will rise throughout the whole scale ; prices will then rise, as shown in Fig. 6. These two statements, which, for convenience, may be spoken of as the second law of demand and supply, are fre- quently confounded with the first law, from which they are whoUy distinct. They are not laws in a strict sense, but ex- press a degree of probability, varying immensely in different Qra. 1800 Fiq. 5 Z'^wTiol 80 90 Shillings. Fig. 6. — Second Law of Supply and Demand. Fig. 5 shows prohable effect of increase in the whole supply. The dotted line on right shows probable effect of increasing the whole supply to 1800 quarters. Price at which whole supply would be sold rises to 95s. The price at which the whole supply would be bought falls to 10s. The market price falls to 47s. The price below which no sale conld take place falls to 383. The price above which no sale could take place may remain unaltered. The quantity which will be sold rises to 870 quarters. cases, and with different materials. I will now apply these laws to some of the current controversies. 158 GEA.PHIC KEPKESENTATION OF TO 80 90 Shillings. Fig. 6. — Second Law of Supply and Demand. Kg. 6 shows prohable effect of an increase in the pui'Chase fund. The dotted demand line shows the prohahle effect of increasing the purchase fund. The price at which the whole supply would be sold may be unaltered. The price at which the whole supply would be bought rises to 30s. The market price liaes to 53s. The price below which no sale would be effected may remain unaltered. The price above which no sale would take place rises to 65s. The quantity which will be sold rises to 860. It has lately been suggested that the manner of con- ducting bargains will alter the market price of the com- modity ; that, in fact, open market, an auction, and a Dutch auction, might produce three different mafket prices. The peculiarity of an auction is that the supply is con- stant at aU prices, down to a limit which is the reserved price, and which may be absolutely nil. Then the supply at each price is equal at all prices to the whole supply, and it is the competition among buyers alone which keeps the price above zero. This state of things is shown in Fig. 7, where the supply curve has become a straight line parallel to the base line. Fig. 8 represents the supply and demand curves at an auction, with a reserved price at 25s. Except in the shape of the supply curve, which is here always known, these figures do not differ from the typical Fig. 1. And the market price here, as before, is that at which the supply and demand curves cut. This point is ascertained in auctions by the competition of THE LAWS OF SUPPLY AND DEMAND. 159 buyers alone, whereas in open market sellers as well as buyers compete. Qrs. 1800 1600 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 SO Shillings. Fig. 7. — Showing effect of selling 800 quarters unreservedly by auction, the Demand Curve being constant, as in Fig. 1. The supply curve becomes a straight horizontal line. The market price ■will be 50s. If 1200 quarters were to be sold unreservedly, the market price would be 30s. If only 200 quarters, the market price would be 61s. In both forms of auction buyers judge whether at a given price the demand is above or below the supply, partly by the Fiq.8. Fio. S. — Shows the effect of a sale by Auction, with a reserved price of 45s. If 1200 quarters are offered for sale, only 900 will be sold, and the price will be the minimum of 45s. If 600 quarters are offered for sale, they will aU be sold, and the price be 653. q^uickness of the bids, and partly by their former experience; and general knowledge. 160 GRAPHIC REPRESENTATION OF In a Dutch auction buyers are as likely at first tenta- tively to let the seller offer below the market price as to close with him above that price. In an English auction, buyers are as likely at first to run up above the market price as to stop bidding below it. It is only by experience of former markets, and a con- siderable number of tentative transactions, that the theoretical price is approached. The device by which Mr. Thornton has made it appear that in a Dutch and English auction there might be two market prices, is to assume that the demand at prices in the FCcj. 9. 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 Shillings. Fig. 9. — Thornton's Case, in which the price is indefinite between two limits. The supply at an auction, unreserved, is 80O quarters. There is a demand for exactly 800 at 15s., 20s., and all intermediate prices. The supply and demand curves coincide between 15s. and 20s., aiid_;the market price is not defined within those limits. neighbourhood of the market price is constant at all prices ; that the same number, and no more, fish would be bought at 18s. as at 20s. In this case the demand curve becomes horizontal near the market price ; and as the supply curve is also horizontal, the market price is indeterminate. This case is not peculiar to any form of bargain, but represents an unusual state of mind. It is shown in Fig. 9. Where only a small number of transactions take place, there can, in the above sense, be no theoretical market price ; thus, with one buyer and seller of one thing, the demand and THE LAWS OF SUPPLY AND DEMAND. 161 supply curve become two straight lines, ending abruptly, as in Fig. 10. If the supply line overlaps the demand line, the sale will Horses Sunshine Fairy Fia. 10. Demands, Srcpply. DemoLTtd. ^pp f-y- 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 pounds sterling. Fig. 10. — Sales of one article by one man to another. A owns the horse Sunshine, he will sell it at any price above £50. B will buy that horso at any price below £40. The demand and supply curves are two straight lines which do not overlap. C owns the mare Fairy, which he will sell at any price above £40. D will buy the mare Fairy at any price below £50. The demand and supply lines overlap, and the price is indeterminate, depending on the relative skill of the two persons in bargaining. take place, and not otherwise ; but the price is indeter- minate. This is true whether the sale be by private bargain, by Dutch or by English auction. FL3.H Horses 3 Supply. 2 1 D emancL. 10 30 40 SO 60 pounds sterling. Fio. 11. — ^Thornton's Case of three horses for sale at one price, one wanted at same price. Price determinate and also quantity sold, by intersection of demand with supply curve, which indicates 3, or any smaller nwnber, for sale at £50 or any higher price. Fig. 11 shows Mr. Thornton's case of three horses, or M 162 GEAPHIO EEPKESENTATION OF an;^ less number, for sale at £50 each, and one purchaser at £50. The curves indicate plainly enough the fact that th6 sale of one horse is possible. The quantity sold is not equal to the quantity bought, but it is more nearly equal than at any other price. We are now able to see precisely in what sense and in what cases the first law of demand and supply may be said to fix prices in a market. This law only selects one among many possible prices already determined in the minds of sellers and buyers ; it does not in any case determiae, or even change, the price at which any one seller chooses to sell or any one buyer chooses to buy. In other words, the law states that the price wUl be that corresponding to the inter- section of the two curves, but in no way determines what those curves will be. Moreover, the law only comes into operation where buyers and sellers can approximately estimate whether, at a given price, the quantity wanted or the quantity for sale is the greater. Competition in open market, or at any form of auction, is one mode in which this estimate may be formed. The first and second laws of demand and supply cannot affect those cases where the buyers and sellers have no means of estimating the relation between demand at a price and supply at a price. Examples of this occur — 1st. In simple transactions between man and man for one object. 2d. When sealed tenders are sent in for the supply of a given aricle. 3d. When shares in a new company are applied for before any market is found for the shares. In the first case, neither demand nor supply curve can be drawn : the price is that at which the buyer can persuade the seller to part with the article. THE LAWS OF SUPPLY AND DEMAND. 163 Iq the second case, the supply curve can be drawn, hut the demand at a price does not exist, and the demapd curve cannot be drawn. The buyer waits till the tenders are opened, choosing the lowest. In the third case, the supply is fixed, being the whole stock of the company : the supply curve becomes a simple point. The demand is unknown until the applications for shares are opened — being all at one price, the demand curve then becomes a point either above or below a supply point. If above, the shares are allotted, but their price to the applicants is unaffected by the excess of the demand over the supply. As soon as allotment takes place the market price can be determined ; and, in accordance with Law II., if the whole demand at one price has been in excess of the supply at that price, the demand curve at other points in the neighbour- hood of that at which the shares were allotted will probably be above the supply curve, and the shares will reach a- premium. Eigging the market consists in the artificial pro- duction of false supply and demand curves, with the object of deceiving the public as to the market price. Even where the first and second laws apply, the price selected by the first law, and the change of price resulting from the second law, depend on the state of mind of the buyers and sellers simply, and not on any material quantity, or on any law hitherto stated. The demand cui've and supply curve indicate certain resolutions on the part of buyers and sellers ; and these curves are therefore variable within certain limits, and do vary with every cause which can affect the desire of men for the article in question. The limits are set by the purchase fund to the demand curve, by the whole supply to the supply curve ; but at what price the limit for the supply curve, and at what quantity and price the limit for the demand curve, shall be touched, is wholly within the competence of the buyers and sellers. 164 GRAPHIC REPRESENTATION OF The first and second laws of demand and supply there- fore afford little help, or no help, in determining what the price of any object will be in the long run. If the supply be limited, as in the case of pictures by an old master, the desire for the article may rise or fall to any extent both on the part of buyers and sellers. The knowledge that only 200 pictures of a given artist exist helps us in no conceivable way to determine what their value will be, nor whether that value will rise or fall. In a given market, on a given day, the elements of the demand and supply curves already exist in the minds of purchasers and sellers, and both laws will apply, but neither law in the least helps to determine the absolute height of either the supply or the demand curve at any one time. In this case of a limited supply we are thrown back on the truism that the price of the article depends on the desire felt for that article relatively to others ; but it is worth while -to observe that the price is not fixed by the buyer, but by the holder. No man, by saying I will not give more than 100 guineas for that picture, can make the price 100 guineas. The price at any moment of a similar article cannot be lower than the lowest price which any holder will accept. The popular adage that the worth of an article is what it will fetch, supposes the holder forced to sell unreservedly; competition of buyers then fixes the price by the first law of demand and supply. Leaving on one side the case of a limited supply as un- approachable, let us consider the case of an article, the manu- facture of which continues, and of which the quantity made depends iiltimately on the price obtainable. It is not neces- sary to suppose that the possible quantity produced should be unlimited, but only that as the price obtainable increases, the supply manufactured can be increased until the supply at a price equals the demand at a price. THE LAWS OF SXJPPLY AOT) DEMAND. 165 In this category fall most manufactured goods. The average demand curve may vary to an indeterminate extent, but the average supply curve wilL be found in the long run to depend simply on the cost of production ; inasmuch as manu- facturers rarely desire the article they make for itself, but make it only with the object of selling it. If in a given market, or series of markets, they find no de- mand, or an insufficient demand, for their produce, at cost price (including what they think a fair profit), they will cease to produce, or produce only as much as the demand at that price requires. While, if the demand equals or exceeds the supply at a higher price than cost price as above defined, makers will be tempted to produce more, until by the action of the second law the demand and supply at cost price become equal. From these considerations may be deduced the third law of demand and supply, which really does enable us to estimate the probable price of any article, as well as the probable quantity manufactured, and which may be stated as follows : — Pkop. 3. In the long run, the price of the manufactured article is chiefly determined hy the cost of its production, and the quantity manufactured is chiefly determined ly the demand at that price. The average height of the supply curve, over a number of years, depends on the cost of production alone ; but at any moment its position above or below that average depends on the estimate formed by producers whether the actual demand curve is above or below the average, and whether the future demand curve is likely to rise above or fall below the actual demand curve. This uncertain estimate varying day by day according to transactions in the market and the dispositions of holders, determines the departures of the supply curve from the average fixed by cost of production. These de- 166 GEAPHIC REPRESENTATION OF partures alone (wHcli may be considerable) are the sub- ject matter of the first and second laws of demand and supply. It is to be observed that this case has one point in common with that where the quantity of an article is limited — viz. the price in the long run is fixed by the holders ; the number of transactions or quantity sold, by the buyers. For when we say the average price depends on the cost of production, including a profit to producers, these producers are free to choose what profit they will be content with as a body. This profit may vary, and does vary im- mensely in different countries, and at different times. Com- petition at any one time prevents wide divergence from the average rate of profit expected by manufacturers ; but what profit is sufficient to induce a man to produce is none the less a mere matter of opinion. Still, over a long range of years the general opinion on this point in a given country can be ascertained, and thus, by the third law, then and there the probable price of an article can be calculated. The graphic representation of the third law is very similar to that of the first. The ordiaates of the demand curve repre- sent the average quantity wanted, say in a year, at the several prices. This curve can only be approximately estimated beforehand from past experience, and is Subject to no one general law for all materials. For each material experience may, however, show several points of great importance in the curve ; as, for instance, whether the curve be nearly horizontal, the total demand being little affected by price, or whether it is sharply inclined, showing that the demand increases rapidly as price is lowered, and vice versd. Statistics collected over several years might also show whether the general character of the curve was convex or concave to the base, and at what rate approximately the average height of the curve increased year by year. Thus, for many materials, approximately accurate average yearly demand curves might be determined by the collection of statistics. THK LAWS OF SUPPLY AND DEMAND. 167 The ordinates of the average supply curve represent the quantity which will be produced in a year at each price. This curve wiU. also vary for all materials. 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