LORD R. CHURCHILL ON THE LAND LAWS.

Gisborne Standard and Cook County Gazette, Volume III, Issue 355, 24 September 1889, Page 3

LORD R. CHURCHILL ON THE LAND LAWS.

London, August 3. Lord Randolph Churchill broke silence after his trip to Norway and Sweden, by addressing a number of enthusiastic meetings at Walsall. At the first meeting the building, which holds about 2000 persons, was crowded. Lord Randolph Churchill’s address was re* markable for the advanced views which he Urged. He said :— Now, I will take for your consideration this evening four great social questions with which I think our elective representative local authorities are eminently qualified to deal. I take first the question which is very much talked about and written about, and has been talked and written about for a great many years—a question of great interest to the people—and that is the reform of our land laws. Land, I might almost say without exaggeration, is a drug in the market. But the difficulties in the way of this most bene* ficial reform appear to me to arise from the disproportionate expenses which are connected with the transfer of land, and from the complicated and elaborate procedure which is necessary for the transfer of land. Undoubtedly these great obstacles have been the laborious and ingenious work of- lawyers during many years—(laughter)—and these great obstacles depend for their existence in the first place upon the absence of a proper and complete register of land by will and deed. Well, now, it appears to me that both of these great difficulties might be easily overcome. In your local authority I perceive a perfect instrument for the registration of land. It seems to me to be an obvious reform to impose upon the local authority by law the duty of registering all land and houses, and all charges and mortgages upon that land and those houses, within their jurisdiction. And you might further provide, without injustice, that registration Gf land and houses for a certain number of years should give a title; and you might further assume that where on land and houses mortgages have been made or charges imposed, that the fact of those

mortgages having been made or charges imposed should be taken to constitute a good Mjtie in the persons who borrowed the money the charge. And you would further provide that all transfer of land and houses after a certain date which were not inscribed on the register should be absolutely invalid and worthless. lam perfectly certain that a great many of our local authorities will find no end of objections to that suggestion. But I put aside their objections, and I invite you te contemplate the result of legislation of that kind. In a very few years’ time you would attain this state of things; that if any of you, or I, or anybody on this platform were anxious to invest our savings or capital in land or houses and met with a person who was anxious to sell those commodities, all we should have to do would be this • we should go to the registry office—say in this town or this district—an entry would be made in the book, the money for the land would be handed over, and the transaction would occupy about five or ten minutes of time. Nn deeds would necessary, no expense, except, perhaps, a small fee to the registrar; and transactions in land, which now cost persons who transact them a very considerable per centage of the money involved, and which take up no end of time, would be completed rapidly and cheaply and one of the great obstacles to the possession of land in small quantities by the people of this country would be absolutely swept away. Now I come to the second obstacle, and this I take to be the far too unrestricted powers of settlement of land by will or deed. Gentlemen, I have long been of opinion, and have before expressed that opinion, that life estates in land are totally inconsistent with the {public welfare. This system was invented by the ingenuity of our legal friends for the purpose of protecting an individual from the consequences of his own folly and his own extravagances. Now it is, I quite admit, too much to expect that we should be able to abolish life estates in land at one stroke, though I think the tendency of legislation is distinctly that way; but this I do most earnestly advocate as an essential portion of any real reform of our that settlement of land by will or deed on unborn lives should be prohibited for the future. A bill of one clause is all that would be necessary to make all settlement of land on unborn lives invalid. If yon join to that bill another clause abolishing primogeniture in cases of intestacy where real estate is involved, you would have effected such a reform of your land laws that in at most two generations half the land of Engand would have come into the market, and half the great estates would have been broken up and divided amongst numerous proprietors. But, gentlemen, what does that mean ? It means this: that new capital, new energy, new brains, new minds would be applied to the cultivation of the land; it means that prosperity, activity, energy, would be visible over the whole of your rural districts. And what does that mean ? It means that the prosperity of your rural districts arising from the application of new capital would react on the manufacturing towns, and you would have increased demands for the products that such towns as Walsall produce. You may say, perhaps, that it is not a very likely subject, but I think yon will admit that it is B very important and interesting question for the future of this country. I would now ask y-ur attention to another question which I think will interest you. It is a question o! supreme importance to the people. I mean the condition of the dwellings of our wageearning classes in the large towns. Now, this matter has baen most terribly neglected. How ought we to go to work on this question of the better housing of our wage.earning classes ? I wonder if it has ever struck any of you on entering or approaching a large manufacturing town what an enormous waste of space there is in connection with the dwellings of the labouring classes ? You see •pre. of valuable ground occupied by streets

alleys and courts, composed of nothing but one or two storeyed buildings of the Kost miserable character-wretchedly built, ■a a rule jerry built, with rotten walls, insufficiently lighted and insufficiently aired rooms, and buildings in which ail Sanitary laws, to say nothing of moral laws, are defied and trampled under foot. Again I suggest to you, as a practical method of dealing with this question, what an enormous improvement it would be in our large towns if, instead of these streets, alleys, and courts ve could see great structures, solidly bp'lt, divided off into separate dwellings, With all the privacy which a separate house give ; with well-aired and well lighted

rooms, five or six storeys high. That has been tried with great success on a small scale in London, and I believe in one or two of our large towns, hut only on a very small scale; and where it has been tried it has met with complete success. And those great buildings such as I have in my mind might be fitted with hydraulic elevators and lighted with the electric light. There is no luxury in hydraulic elevators or the electric light; they can be fitted to a building as easily ps a staircase can be construetea, or as easily as gas can be laid on. But do you perceive the enormous economy of expenditure in connection with the erection of these buildings for our wage-earning classes ? If it is correct—and I am certain that it is correct—that the economy of space which you would derive can be translated into pounds, shillings, and pence, and that pounds, shillings, and pence means absolute profit to the enterprise, what ought we to do P We ought by law to impose upon opr local authorities the duty of rehousing the laboring classes within their jurisdiction, where the laboring clasasß are housed in an insanitary or improper or wretch-d manner. We ought to give to the local authorities compulsory powers of purchase of land for sites—of land and of wretched miserable dwellings, and I don’t think that the local authorities can be called upon to give high prices for much cf the property which they Would have to purchase in the towns, The ground landlords, to my mind, have so neglected their duties; they have been content to allow their tenants to be so miserably and wretchedly accommodated; they have been content merely as a rule - though, of course, th-re are exceptions —to all their pockets, so that I don’t think very m. ch mercy or consideration need be shown to them ; and I think that, as a rule, a very few years* purchase would be sufficient to purchase out their rights. Well, now, the wauty of this scheme to my mind lies fa

this—that supposing the town authorities, elected by and representing the people, purchased sites of land and miserable dwellings, swept them awav and erected great dwellings, such as I hold are suited for the classes who would inhabit them, the land so purchased and the dwellings so built would belong to the people in the towns in which the operation took place, because the corporation or the town council is merely representative of the people, and merely distributes the rates and and ministers the rates which they raise from the people. They are the people, and owning the houses, own them in the name of the people, and the people would be the owners of a large proportion of the dwellings in which they live. Under these circumstances you would have no rack-renting; there would be no motive for rack-renting, for the profits that would arise from the very moderate rents would be amply sufficient to maintain those buildings in repair, and would leave a margin for new buildings to • be erected. And, moreover, by the economy of space which would be created by this simple operation, you would find occasion for constructing and laying out parkj, gardens, and allotments—the absence of which is a most deplarable blot upon our English towns. I turn to another great social question, very nearly allied with the last, and of equal and supreme importance. I direct your attention to the unlimited and unrestricted sale of alcoholic liquors, which is the disgrace of our English civilisation. I direct your attention to the licensing question Now I think there is a very general consensus of opinion that the duty of licensing and the responsibility of licensing establishments for the sale of alcoholic liquor should be placed in the hands of the local authorities. Popular control is what every social reformer must advocate for sale of alcoholic liquor, and that the people of each locality should decide and should prescribe, by means of their representatives, the extent to which alcoholic liquor may reasonably and safely be sold for the reasonable and moderate requirements of the locality. I have no doubt a great deal is to said for the brewers. No one is more ready to recognise in a fair and judicial manner the claims of the brewers. But what I say is, let us reform; and the method of reform which I advocate, and the method which I declare to be urgent, is that we should invest our popular local authorities, who represent the people and who are controlled by the people, with the duty of licensing the establishments for the sale of liquor. But there is one more q uestion which I own has attracted my attention, and which I think is a very urgent question. It is a question upon which there is a great difference of opinion, but it is a question which is open to discussion, I allude to the question of the State interfering to fix the hours of labour in this country. Now there is a great deal to be said both for and against such interposition. It conflicts with our English ideas of liberty, and we love liberty in this country perhaps more than anything else—individual liberty—but on the other hand there has been an enquiry going on in Lon* don, which, like the report of the Royal Commission on the Housing of the Poor, has disclosed what I can only call an appalling of things in the labour market. I allude to the enquiry by the House of Lords into the sweating system. There we have proof after proof, witness after witness, who show that there are men and women in this country, who, to earn a pittance, have to work twenty or twenty-two hours per day. It is almost incredible—and I say that labour of that kind is totally inconsistent with either health or strength. Now, we wish to be a free people ; but surely, before all other things, we ought to try that we should be a strong and healthy people. Where labour is carried to this excess for the benefit of Sne person or another, I say it is carried on to an excess which it is very difficult to justify by any reasoning of any kind. Her Majesty’s Government the other day for some inscrutable reason, a reason which I cannot pretend to guess at, decided that their representative whom they send to the Labour Congress in Switzerland should not be allowed to discuss this great question. Well, now, you never settle great questions by refusing to discuss them.

I think that if ever there was a question which ought to be discussed it was this question of the hours of labour. We ought to be able to arrive at some conclusion on the subject. But this is certain, that the investigations of the Sweating Committee of the House of Lords, when they come to be known by the public, will produce a great impression—when they come to be summarised and circulated in a convenient form. You will not tolerate that large classes of your countrymen shall labour under conditions in which it has been proved they do labour, and the Government will have to deal with the question, whether on sanitary principles or whether on social principles, they will have, at any rate, to that labour shall no longer be carried on under conditions in which it is now carried on Hn certain classes and certain industries of this country. I think I have shown "you in the words which you have allowed me to speak to you to-night that the harvest of 'subjects ripe to be dealt with is plenteous, but that the labourers seem to be few. I earnestly trust that the spirit which undoubtedly animates this great meeting—the spirit of zeal for social progress and reform, which I am certain animates the vast majority of the constituencies of this country, may infuse new life and vigour into our Legislature, so that this Parliament may not terminate without having left upon our history and upon our law a deep and permanent record of good work well performed. (Loud and prolonged cheering.)