Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 129.djvu/200

192 amongst other things, the price at which other proprietors have sold their land, the arrears of rent, the gross rental already paid by the tenants during the previous six years, and the net receipts of the proprietor, the number of acres held by adverse claimants, and the possibility of ejecting them, and the condition of the original grants from the crown. As the tenants have for many years, with the concurrence of the legislature, baffled and thwarted the proprietors by all possible means in their efforts to assert their rights, their resistance to the law is now rewarded by a proportional diminution in the compensation allowed to the proprietor. Adverse claimants are probably squatters, with no title but possession; and the undoubted difficulty of ejecting them from their holdings authorizes a further deduction from the amount of compensation. The proprietors had protested loudly against all the measures of the provincial Assembly, including the act of 1875; but it is not surprising that the smallness of the sums awarded by the commissioners is regarded, not as a necessary consequence of previous legislation, but as a new and distinct grievance. No objection can be made to a provision that no percentage should be allowed for compulsory purchase. Residents in England who had inherited large tracts of land in a distant colony could not be supposed to feel any sentimental attachment to their estates. It must not be forgotten, that all the deductions allowed by the act really corresponded to drawbacks from the value of the property. If no transfer had been effected, the leaseholders would constantly have become more turbulent and more contumacious.

The action of the provincial legislature was first suggested by Lord Granville in a despatch which referred to the Irish Land Act, then recently passed. The principle of compulsory interference was common to Ireland and to the colony; but the reasons which were thought to render the application of the principle expedient were as different as the economic circumstances of the two countries. The remedies were also unlike, for in Ireland proprietors have not been compelled to sell their estates, and in Prince Edward Island there are no evicted tenants to receive compensation. In one country land was scarce and dear, and it was the object of incessant competition. Prince Edward Island is thinly settled, and some of the proprietors owned large tracts of uncultivated land. The universal establishment of freehold tenures will probably promote population and prosperity. Ireland was twenty years ago over-peopled; and it has at present a sufficient number of inhabitants. It is a cause for regret that the leasehold tenures in Prince Edward Island were not voluntarily commuted some years ago, when their proprietors might probably have secured more liberal terms. A similar measure would not be applicable to England, where the accumulation of large estates, and the customary relation of landlord and tenant, result in a great degree from economical causes; but there can be no doubt that the precedent will often be quoted. The Irish Land Act passed on the assurance of the government that the recognition of exceptional circumstances would not affect the security of property in other parts of the United Kingdom; but one of Mr. Gladstone's colleagues has often since publicly contended that the principle of the Irish Act must in consistency be applied to England. Lord Dufferin and Lord Carnarvon may be acquitted of willingness to tamper with the foundations of property; but their authority will be hereafter invoked in favour of schemes for the redistribution of land.

 —In nothing has the advance of practical science been more clearly evidenced than in the extent to which substances formerly wasted and lost are now reclaimed and made to constitute an important element in the profits of the manufacturer. One of these applications consists in the recovery of soap-suds from the washings of wool in woollen factories. These were formerly allowed to run down the sewers and into the streams, to the great pollution of the latter; but in Bradford, they are now run from the washing-bowls into vats, and there treated with sulphuric acid. The fats rise to the surface in a mass of grease a foot or more in thickness, which is carefully collected and treated in various ways, mostly by distillation. The products are grease, used for lubricating the cogs of driving-wheels in the mills; oleic acid, which is worth about £30 per ton, and used as a substitute for olive-oil; stearin, worth £80 per ton, etc. It is said that some large mill-owners are now paid from £500 to £1,000 a year for these suds, which a few years ago were allowed to run to waste.