Page:Peasant proprietary in Ireland; a rejoinder.djvu/13

 factors with which these statutes had to deal. In cutting off the encumbrance of landlord privileges which exasperated the common folk and kept the country in a condition of chronic misery and unrest, the legislation of Prussia is an emphatic protest against the system of double ownership. The sole object sought and effected by the reforms was that every class should participate in the rights, duties and blessings which flow from landed property. Fixity of tenure, a halting device which finds so much favour in Ireland as a patent specific for its agrarian troubles, was in Prussia rejected as an incomplete makeshift, a half-measure settlement, for in such an arrangement it was felt that though, as an economic writer once expressed it, 'the landlord was divorced from the soil, yet the tenant was not married to it.' And antecedently to these beneficial reforms and to relieve the congestion of population on the cultivated lands, Frederick the Great, by organised settlements, colonized the waste lands, fixing upon them in perfect security from disturbance by rack-renting a sturdy population whose sons fought his battles, 'and their sons fought at Leipsic.' In this movement there was an acknowledgment of the great fact that as Mr. Morier expressed it, 'land which it may not pay to reclaim for the immediate object of rent will yield sufficient returns when tilled as property.' The grand principle of this and of all land legislation in Prussia was to secure the comfort of the people and the material prosperity of the State. 'It was felt when that prime object was reached one or the great ends and purposes of Government was attained.' That the results have justified the hope of the reformers and the project succeeded, the independence, the comparative competency, the trained intelligence and international supremacy readied and held by Germany to-day—'Germany, a complex state of small proprietors'—is evidence strong, conclusive and sufficient of