The Right of Property in Land

William Ogilvie, The Right of Property in Land, 1781.

SECTION V
Of such examples and beginnings of Reformation, as might be expected from the generous efforts of private Persons acting singly.

65. The private interest of the landholders thoroughly understood, and pursued on enlarged plans, might incline them to adopt the same schemes of small farms, and. leases of long duration, which appear to be so eminently-favourable to the great interests of the community. This expedience is more particularly apparent in those large estates which are not in hazard of being brought to market every other generation, but may be expected to pass, as they have already done, from one age to another in the possession of the same family. On such estates, leases on improvement may be introduced still more beneficial to the interests of the proprietor's family than to those of the cultivator's, yet even to them far more eligible than any lease of a less permanent tenure. But if the present proprietor cannot be induced, for the sake of distant advantages to his family, and the general prosperity of those who are employed in tilling his estate, to divest himself, or his immediate successors, of all power of renewing leases; still, great advantage might arise from an arrangement which would keep a certain proportion of the farms, as every third or fourth farm up and down the estate, on leases of very considerable duration; these, when they fell, to be replaced by others, so that the proportion should be still the same. These permanent and valuable leases would tend to bring about the accumulation of stock on the estate, and the establishment of wealthy farmers, by whose younger sons, or other relations, it might be expected that advanced rents would be given for the adjoining farms, even on leases of much shorter duration.
The English landholders seem to deviate more from their own and from the public interest by the preference they give to farms of large extent, than by any unwillingness to grant leases of considerable duration. The saving of expense in repairs seems in general to be their inducement, and that very essential article ought to be regulated, no doubt, and might perhaps without difficulty be regulated in a better manner. Might not the conditions of the lease be so adjusted as to give the tenant an interest in keeping down the expense of repairs, and seeing them well made, and without delay? Might not the houses on his farm (and these neither too large nor too many) be delivered to him at his entry by appreciation, to be received in the same manner at the expiration of the lease -- he receiving payment for any increase of value within a stipulated extent?
66. The desire of transmitting their estates to a long series of descendants arises very naturally in the minds of men who have enjoyed ample possessions under the protection of a well constituted government; and may, within certain limitations, deserve to be countenanced and promoted by the wisest legislature. It might be entitled, however, to more praise, as proceeding from a liberal spirit, and to more countenance of the laws, as highly favourable to the general welfare, if, instead of securing superfluous opulence to one favoured line of representatives, the plan of such a settlement in tail had for its object to diffuse a moderate competency among a numerous tribe or family of descendants, and to provide that no one of the whole race shall be reduced to penury, but through their own extravagance, or indolent disposition. Both these intentions might be combined in the same scheme, by securing the present rent of the entailed estate to the lineal heir, at all events, and giving at the same time to all other descendants of the entailer, or of his ancestors, a right, when any lease fell vacant (the leases not exceeding three lives), to claim possession of it in full property, at the last rent; or at the old rent, with the chance of being exposed to future claims of other descendants, regulated on the principles of the progressive Agrarian law: these claims being to take place only after all the farms of the estate had been given off by the first rule of entail, each to a particular descendant of the entailer or of his ancestors.
Those persons who having no near relations, or none worthy of their inheritance, are led to bestow their estate on hospitals and other public uses, might obviate the murmurs of their remoter kindred, and the ungenerous insinuations to which the memory of such public benefactors is sometimes exposed, by making such a provision as this, in favour of persons descended from the same ancestors with themselves.
67. In every opulent society there is gradually produced a considerable fund, which accumulates from time to time in the hands of beneficent and charitable persons, and is ready to be applied, chiefly in the way of legacy and bequest, to the more urgent wants and occasions of the community, and to supply what the revenue of the State cannot be made to reach, or what its attention has overlooked. Churches, monasteries, universities, bridges, and hospitals of various kinds have successively become the objects of this well intended munificence in Europe, and corresponding foundations have in like manner engrossed it among the nations of the East. In some countries these objects are so fully provided for that the bountiful stream of donations seems almost to have ceased to flow: but the effect is apparent only, not real; the public wealth continuing the same, the charitable fund will continue the same also, if new and worthy objects are presented to its bounty. Hereafter, perhaps, in enlightened nations, the independence of the plough may be numbered among these objects, as worthy to partake of such beneficent endowments, after the demands of sickness, of declining age, and deserted infancy have been in some reasonable measure provided for. In such a country, he who would have bequeathed his estate to a hospital, had hospitals been wanted, may think of dividing it, in the first place, into freehold allotments of a single plough each, and bequeath the revenue thence arising, to be applied at certain periods, to be portioned out in freehold in the same manner.
68. Nor ought it to be supposed that some specimen of this equal property in land, some example of what good effects it might produce in a narrow district, is too great an effort to be expected from the ordinary liberality of private men, possessed of ample fortunes. He who possesses six or eight manors cannot be thought to deprive even his remotest posterity of any great share of their inheritance, should he at the present time divide one at least of these manors into small farms of a single plough, assigning each of them in perpetual property to the cultivator for such rent as he would consent to give for this perpetual right. Or were this one manor rendered subject to the options of a progressive Agrarian law, the right of claiming settlements being restricted to persons born on other manors of the estate, such an institution could not fail to operate as a premium in raising the value of the estate. But honour alone, and the conscious satisfaction of having made a public-spirited and laudable attempt, would more than compensate, to men of such ample fortunes, the loss that may be supposed to arise from some diminution of a rent-roll.
In certain nations (though not in Britain) the Princes of the blood are possessed of revenues equal to those of sovereign states, without any civil or military establishment to maintain; and should they even neglect the splendour of their retinue, and of their domestic court, still the public reverence would wait on the dignity of their exalted birth. Among these men, placed in an intermediate situation between sovereigns and subjects, exempted from the claims that are made on the first, and from the family wants of the second, it might be expected that liberal and illustrious schemes, conducive to the good of mankind, might find patrons worthy of them, whom the necessity of a great expense would animate rather than deter. Men of noble minds might rejoice in the occasion of expending their great revenues on some more dignified object than that frivolous luxury in which they are usually wasted; they might rejoice in the occasions of distinguishing themselves from the vulgar herd of subordinate princes, whom the sentiments of mankind rate only as a sort of furniture, pertaining to the state apartments of a great monarch's court.