household things troublesomely too high. Yes, and the voting shows that continued free imports without a capital levy are less attractive to the electorate than free imports plus a compulsory reduction of war debts. But the heaviest aggregate poll is won by Tariffs minus the Capital Levy.

In plainer words, the election is decisive in one matter only--that Liberalism is no longer needed in our country. It lags superfluous on the political stage. One part of its electorate belongs to Labour, and the other part to the Conservatives. It manœuvres for renewed support partly because its inherited customs are as a second human nature and partly because its hermits of convention detest the humiliation of defeat. From the first its Radical compromises were a strategical appeal to Labour, and Conservatives also, in answer to this outflanking policy, were obliged, in self-defence, to angle for Labour votes in Radical waters. Thus inevitably the two old historic parties, while developing their campaigns, awakened Labour into self-expression and evolved a third party, which in course of time might displace them both. The independent growth of this new party began in 1900, when Labour polled 118,003 votes and won nine seats. Six years later the votes polled for Labour rose to 448,808, and fifty-four seats were gained. In January 1910 fourteen of these seats were lost, though the total polling was heavier, 532,807 votes. Twelve months afterward, in December 1910, the aggregate voting shrank to 381,024, while the members elected increased to forty-two. Labour was still enthralled in a disjointed way by the rival strategies of its parents, the two historic parties.

Then for eight years there was no General Election. The two old parties learnt nothing much from the war, while Labour, after a spell of almost hysterical jubilation, acquired a liking for co-ordinated action in its political movements. Even in 1918, when Mr. Lloyd George captured the country with a glorious farce of bubble promises and aims, Labour won sixty-one seats and polled 1,754,133 votes. Only a person here and there noted these significant figures. Indeed, the Lloyd Georgians imagined that Labour accepted with filial pride a coalition, an epitome of its parentage. Happy and over-confident, Mr. Lloyd George began a period of dictatorship, passing from one Supreme Council meeting to another, always with complete success and always with ill results. Threats of Direct Action from Labour troubled him somewhat; they seemed to come from genuine feeling, and how could he win the peace if genuine feeling became active in England as well as in France, in Russia, in Italy, and even somehow in conquered Germany? Turkey, of course, had no excuse for genuine feeling, as only Christians have a right to show political emotion when very much distressed; but Greece should attend

Has there

to Turkey then the Near East would be submissive. ever been such ridiculous comedy in a time of tragedy? The Lloyd Georgians, with abundant help from the defeated Greeks and the conquering Turks, passed into the General Election of 1922, when Labour won 142 seats and polled 4,247,800 votes. This year it has added more than 100,000 votes to its aggregate poll, and its 193 M.P.'s form a united party. Its adherence to unpopular beliefs has acted as a cement so binding that even an electoral boycott by the whole newspaper Press, apart from the dying Daily Herald, has failed to arrest its advance. Outraged movements prosper, and petted ones decline.

But, like the other parties, Labour has a confidence which is ridiculous, because the condition of Europe is too sick for a rapid recovery. To prepare prescriptions for its complicated malady seems very much more like unbounded 'cheek' than anything else. Indeed, if the three political parties had set before the electorate a detailed and true diagnosis of the European breakdown, the election would not have been a bawling scrimmage.

And this brings us to the main point. In times of grave crisis it is as difficult for people to behave wisely as it is for them to walk easily, naturally, in a hospital ward. Visitors to hospitals try to muffle their footfalls, look ill at ease, and speak in nervous whispers. So in times of political danger there is a great school of thought which regards humour as levity, and ridicule as cruel and harmful. It believes in right feelings and high thoughts. The members of this school forget, in their fervour, that preaching has never an enduring effect on the business of life. For this reason the beauty of Christ's teaching has had tragical vicissitudes through 1923 years. It is the expression of just ridicule, not the shaping of high thoughts into noble speech, that electorates need when they look at the drama of politics and watch the habitual over-confidence of professional politicians.

Beaconsfield was keenly alive to this fact. In his political novels he relieved serious thinking with his Tadpoles and Tapers, and in open contests with opponents his most dangerous weapons were quotable phrases of penetrating ridicule. Since 1918 dozens of political movements in Europe have been comically perilous, yet no campaign of ridicule has been set in movement, except in party cartoons by David Low, who is certainly inimitable. It was Low's ridicule that pricked and exploded the political fame of Mr. Lloyd George, always with an amusing courtesy that could not be forgotten. In Low's cartoons the versatile actor became the Charlie Chaplin of politics, delightfully clever, a jolly amusement for odd half-hours of leisure.

With equal humour, the ridicule of Low has done much to bring about the fall of Mr. Baldwin, partly by showing that

politicians are reckless when they allow the words 'plain,’ 'honest,' and 'ordinary' to be attached to their minds and policies. Does the present day need statesmen who are ordinary? Surely it needs commanding ability, genius? And when people begin to advertise the 'honesty' of their chosen leader they use a word that electors distrust, and that should be kept for the obituary notices given to dead statesmen even by political foes, for sham fighting in politics is too common and too conspicuous for its honesty to be advertised, just as hard bargaining is too frequent in business to justify prayer-meetings in city offices. If Mr. Baldwin had been described as clubbable, the chosen word would have been correct, and Low's difficulties would have been greatly increased.

It is a pity that Low, a master of political ridicule, should be attached to any particular side. As a candid spectator of all parties he would be invaluable to the whole electorate, and soon his telling ridicule would have influence abroad. He sees truly and thinks surely, and his draughtsmanship with pen and ink is surprisingly vivid, varied, searching and alembicated. Would that democracy, in its own best interests, would have a non-party newspaper financed by the State in which the most competent cartoonists and journalists would show up by means of ridicule all the weak points in the political drama! They should be pledged to act as impartially as a jury and to make their verdicts effectively plain.

That ridicule is creeping into political life is proved by two facts: the failure of Mr. Lloyd George in the most recent of his spectacular comedies and the humiliation of the double-minded Press trust. No political candidate dared to take his policy from that trust. Hence the Continent has learnt that quotations from selected British newspapers should not be read abroad as examples of British public opinion. Ridiculous as the election was in a great many of its aspects, it has yet been useful, showing that many papers controlled by one man have no control over the voter when their policy invites banter and mockery.

WALTER SHAW SPARROW.

THE LAND PROBLEM

ENCLOSURE AND RE-ENCLOSURE

IN the development of English agriculture, enclosure has had a predominant influence. The foundation of our present land system is usually dated from the Norman Conquest. It is not necessary to discuss to what extent feudalism, as the term is generally understood, was grafted upon the system already established by the Saxons or derived from the Romans, or whether the organised village community, as we find it when it first comes within the scope of recorded history, was a natural growth or an artificial product. While it appears certain that at the time of the Domesday Survey the whole surface of the country was apportioned by the King's decree, so that, in law, there was 'no land without a lord,' it is, nevertheless, highly probable that the change in many districts was one rather of form than substance, and that the actual conditions of life in the villages continued with little apparent alteration.

Under the manorial system the lord usually had a certain part of his demesne land in his exclusive occupation-in other words, it was enclosed-and the process of enclosure went on continually as individuals acquired, by various methods, full rights of user.

Under the manorial system all the land that was suitable, or could be made available, was gradually brought into some sort of economic use. A manor was a tract of land, varying in size, over which the lord had jurisdiction, and in the utilisation of which he had a dominant interest. In the Domesday Survey there are records of 9250 manors, but most lords held more than one manor, and many held a large number. Many more manors were created subsequently, but the formation of new manors practically ceased at the end of the thirteenth century. The manor commonly comprised, in addition to the demesne land adjacent to the manor house, which was in the exclusive occupation of the lord (corresponding to what would now be termed the home farm) and a few small parcels or holdings of land allocated to individuals, the great common field or fields, the common pastures, and large tracts of surrounding waste or forest. Although the population for many

centuries increased very slowly-war, famine, pestilence and general insecurity of life keeping an effective check on its extension-there was a natural tendency to enlarge the area of utilisable land, and gradually the waste was reclaimed. At the end of the seventeenth century the extent of the waste land in England and Wales was estimated at 10,000,000 acres, but this must have been an understatement, and it is probably more nearly the truth to say that not more than one-half of the land of the country was at that time in agricultural use. A century later Arthur Young estimated that there were 600,000 acres waste in Northumberland alone. In Yorkshire 275,000 acres were waste. Three-quarters of Westmorland was unutilised. Within thirty miles of London there were 200,000 acres of waste land. Sedgemoor was a fen; the Mendip Hills were uncultivated.

The earlier form of enclosure was mainly the reclamation of land from a state of natural waste into a state of utility, or indeed, in some cases, the restoration to use of land long left derelict from earlier cultivation.

In the thirteenth century there is evidence of the activity of lords of the manor in this direction, the Statute of Merton (1235) being passed to secure that the rights of tenants of the manor were respected when commonable wastes were enclosed. Enclosure of the waste falls into a different category from enclosure of common fields, meadows and pasture, although the form in each case is similar. As Dr. Gilbert Slater puts it, 'there is a perfect legal similarity between Acts for extending cultivation and Acts

for enclosing all the open and common arable and other lands of a parish or parishes, which may be termed Acts for extinguishing village communities.' The records of enclosure are very incomplete, and it is not until the early part of the eighteenth century that we begin to have any measure of the progress of the movement. From 1727 to 1845 the number of Acts enclosing commonable wastes or pastures was 1385, the total area enclosed being about 1,750,000 acres. During the same period 2691 Acts were passed for the enclosure of common arable and other lands of the parish, the total area so enclosed being 4,250,000 acres. The General Enclosure Act of 1845 abolished the method of enclosure by private Bill and set up an Enclosure Commission (now merged in the Ministry of Agriculture), under whose supervision all subsequent enclosures have been carried out. Since 1845 enclosures affecting 647,000 acres have been approved.

It will be observed that the records account altogether for the enclosure of about 7,000,000 acres during the past 200 years. There is no doubt, however, that a very considerable area was enclosed during the eighteenth century, as well as previously, without parliamentary sanction and without record. This was