from moorland, and consequently is a somewhat parallel case to the Thorney estate. I have experience of midland grass-land farmers on myshire property, and I have, as you know, to administer very extensive estates (exceeding in area, I think—for I have not materials for giving figures here-the Duke's Beds and Bucks estates) in shire. I think, upon inquiry of experts, you will find it is admitted that these estates are and have for many years been most efficiently maintainedAll the details which the Duke refers to, such as new buildings, draining, steam cultivation, roads, fences, gates, cottages, gardens, privies, water supply, sites for churches and chapels and schools and mission-rooms, school maintenance, provident societies, clergy, charities, pensions, even jubilees and other festivities, receive most careful attention, and are paid for out of the estate resources, sometimes income, sometimes capital, sometimes by terminable rent charges, and, if this entailed a deficiency, twelve months would see me in the bankruptcy court. Of course the percentage of net receipts to gross receipts is not very handsome, but the system is effective, as we rarely have a difficulty in getting tenants willing to pay the rent asked, and arrears are rare. . . . I believe we are doing a public service in securing the highest possiblecultivation of the land and encouraging the best farmers. Rent is, of course, the measure of the value of the land to the tenant, but it by no means represents the landlord's profits. I know, to my cost, that this is very rarely recognised. In assessing my life interest the Inland Revenue, after considerable pressure, and as a special favour, taking as their basis the rental, allowed 12 per cent. for repairs &c., and taxed me on the remaining 88 per cent. I believe, speaking from memory, that the net receipts are not more than 60 per cent. (part of this is payable to other persons, practically joint owners, but without any of the trouble or risk), the remaining 40 being expended on objects without which the rental would not be maintained. I firmly believe that ownership of agricultural land can and ought to be profitable even though to a small extent. If it is not, it is a drain upon instead of an addition to the national resources, and ought to be relieved of all taxation. I also firmly believe in occupiers being encouraged to make their own bargains with landlords and avoid the intervention of valuers and third parties, a class of agriculturists who must be paid, and at a high rate, out of agricultural resources, and who find this a far easier and more lucrative business than cultivating the land. With all respect and admiration for the public spirit shown by the Duke and his predecessors, in my opinion the principles adopted in the case of his estateswill not tend to increase national prosperity if adopted by all owners, as if sound they ought to be. Pray make any use of my opinions that you think proper. At this juncture I revert to my heading. I have said as much as I need about the Land: I now approach the question of the Lodginghouses. Taking things, not as they might be or as they were, but as they are, how comes it that when Bedfordshire and Cambridgeshire have ceased to pay, and instead of paying present a deficit, and when it seems that Devonshire is no better, the Duke of Bedford is able to go on making munificent remissions, spending money in all directions on his rural estates, and keeping Woburn and its surroundings in more scrupulous order than even I, who have known the place ever since I was born, have ever seen there? The answer is simple. Because, as his father said, he owns a few lodging-houses in Bloomsbury'-because, in other words, he is a great ground landlord in London. Roughly speaking, the Bedford estate reaches from the Strand to Euston Square. The whole neighbourhood, to use a vigorous phrase which I once heard from an old Radical, 'stinks of Duke.' Here, if anywhere, Mill's unearned increment is seen in all its glory and beauty: here, if ever, his dictum is made good, and the landlord' grows richer in his sleep.' Now, in dealing with the Duke of Bedford's London estate, I must distinguish, as to origin, between its two parts, though locally they run into one another, and practically constitute one property. Speaking in the House of Commons on the Second Reading of the Welsh Church Bill I said: History records the case of families who have risen to greatness and affluence on the ruins of the abbeys, and it is an interesting constitutional consideration to bear in mind that, in virtue of wealth so acquired, some of the heads of these families obtained peerages and then transmitted their honours to their descendants, who now sit in serried ranks in another place ready to throw out, as soon as they get the opportunity, a Bill designed to carry just a stage further a process to which they themselves owe so much. I will venture, in connection with the subject of abbey lands, to give to the House two instances, one of the way in which Church property should not be dealt with, and the other of the way in which it should be dealt with. If any hon. member on leaving Palace Yard will turn to the right, and walk less than a mile, he will come to the Old Convent Garden of Westminster Abbey, now dedicated to uses which are certainly not sacred, and paying daily tribute to a secular landlord. That is an instance of the way in which Church property should not be dealt with. But if any hon. member will turn to the left, to the precincts of Westminster Abbey, he will find under the shadow of that pile, housed in the very buildings, and enriched by the property, of the old Benedictines, a famous school of learning, with eleemosynary provision for poor scholars, and a system of exhibitions connecting it with Trinity and Christ Church. In the erection of Westminster School on the foundations of Westminster Abbey the House will see the way in which ecclesiastical property should be treated. I have said before in this article that I do not condemn the dissolution of the abbeys, but I cannot praise the way in which their lands were disposed of. Covent Garden and its purlieus are spoils of the Church; but the great estate in Bloomsbury was more respectably acquired. It came by the most legitimate of all means-marriage with an heiress. Rachel Lady Russell, wife of the decapitated William Lord Russell, was the daughter and eventual heiress of the last Earl of Southampton, and from him inherited Southampton House in Bloomsbury, which afterwards, under the name of Bedford House, became so famous in political memoirs as the abode of the fourth Duke of Bedford (Junius's Duke') and the headquarters of the "Bloomsbury Gang.' When, towards the close of the last century, fashion winged its flight to other quarters of the town, Bedford House was pulled down, and its site and all its appurtenances— courtyard, gardens and grounds-were covered with the network of streets and squares which in their names commemorate my family, properties, and its alliances. I have said that the Bloomsbury estate its came by marriage with an heiress, and so it did. But, looking back a little further, I should not be surprised to find that it too, at one time, had been a property of the Church; for the first Earl of Southampton, like the first Earl of Bedford, was a courtier of Henry the Eighth and received some part of his wages in the shape of abbey lands. So much for the different origin of the two parts of the Bedford estate in London; but, however they originated, their results have been the same. They have placed their owner beyond the reach of agricultural depression. Figuratively speaking, they are paved with gold. We have no means of estimating their value, but only to-day, as I write, I see the following morsel in a daily paper : 'The ground rents, amounting to 2,500l. a year, secured upon blocks B, C, and D, Bedford Court Mansions, Bedford Square, which were advertised for sale by auction, have been disposed of by Messrs. Dunn and Soman for 82,000l.' Well done, the Lodging-houses! These are the statistics which are really valuable and interesting. These are the statistics without which the most elaborate particulars of Thorney and Woburn are useless as guides to landowners. If you are drawing the income of a foreign principality from a few lodging-houses in Bloomsbury,' you can easily afford to treat your tenants in the Fens in a fashion which would bring the merely rural landlord to ruin in a twelvemonth. After all, my complaint against the Duke of Bedford is not that he has given us too many statistics, but too few. I ask for more. If prose is powerless, verse may move him. Come live with me, and be my love, And we will all the pleasures prove Unto the statist's raptured eye. Let the Duke convoke another Unionist meeting, and by all means let it be held this time in St. Pancras or Bloomsbury or Drury Lane. Let him again preside, and give a full and exact account of the value of his London estates when they first came into our ancestors' hands; of their gradual increase, of the amount spent on them, and of the income which at the present day they yield. Then, indeed, he will have served great public ends. He will have given us some valuable suggestions for the taxation of ground-values; he will have supplied an object-lesson in the best mode of using ecclesiastical property; and he will have imparted to his brotherlandlords a secret for which many of them will be unfeignedly thankful-how to live like a gentleman when your land presents you with a deficit. GEORGE W. E. RUSSELL. THE INCREASING DURATION OF HUMAN LIFE THIS small article is the result of some years of research on a subject which cannot but be interesting to all human beings-Life and its duration.' I have now put together both published and unpublished records. It may seem strange that one whose childhood was guided by one of the wisest and most learned of men-Sir George Cornewall Lewis-should venture to publish opinions at variance with those which he has expressed on this subject; but it may be that we are governed by the law of contrariety, or autre temps, autre mœurs, or that in reality centenarianism has surprisingly increased. That the human being was intended for greater length of life than is usually attained in our artificial existence is probable from the fact that he does not reach his full and complete development until his twenty-fifth year. The life of most of the lower animals is reckoned to be about five times their maturity in a natural condition, and although disturbing causes interfere with human life in the present day, yet within certain limits man is subject to the same laws as every other type of existence in either the animal or the vegetable kingdom. Nature has assigned to him a certain period during which he should attain to a sound physical and mental maturity, and any attempt to curtail that period by early forcing is, and must be, necessarily productive of lamentable results. The boy or girl may be developed under a system of steady cramming' into a highly accomplished man or woman, long before full age has been reached, but it may be accepted as an axiom in almost all instances that the earlier the development the earlier the decay. The lesson to be learned from the records of those who have lived to advanced years is, that moderation in all things, whether physical or intellectual, is the secret of long life, and that it is easy by systematically violating this rule to produce an artificial old age. A sage once said 'Every man is his own age,' which is no doubt a great truth; for, apart from the variety existing in different races, there is an immense difference in the development of each individual, which may make possible for one what is impossible for another. But one rule might, we think, be followed with benefit: the less the young and incomplete being is put in a forcing house the better; the slower the development, the finer will be in most cases the animal mentally and physically, and the greater the chance of a long, healthy, and useful life. Much has been written and said about the wear and tear of business and occupation, but it is to be believed that in a healthy condition, when once the human being is fully completed, mental exercise can not only be borne, but is wholesome and absolutely necessary. A hundred years ago-in 1796-Doctor William Hufeland wrote: By these observations we are enabled to come to the conclusion respecting the important question, What is the proper term or boundary of human life? One might believe that some degree of certainty could be acquired on this point, but it is incredible what difference in opinion respecting it prevails among philosophers. Some allow man a very long and others a very short duration of life. One might believe that death by Marasmus'-that is to say, by old age-is the true boundary of human life; but this reasoning in the present times is attended with great deception, for, as Lichtenberg says, ' Men have found out the art to engraft old age upon themselves before the time.' 6 It is reported that in those who have worked for generations in factories and underground in mines, tissue degeneration with all the symptoms of extreme old age is capable of taking place at the early age of from forty to fifty years, thus showing how important a factor artificial existence is in inducing premature old age. Hufeland again remarks: The age of the world hitherto has had no perceptible influence on that of man, and people may still become as old as in the time of Abraham and in even earlier periods. There have certainly been times when men lived sometimes longer and sometimes shorter, but this evidently did not arise from the age of the world, but from man himself. When men were in a savage state-simple, laborious children of Nature-and much exposed to the open air, such as shepherds, hunters, and farmers, great age was very common among them; but when they began gradually to despise the dictates of Nature and to indulge in luxury, the duration of their life became shorter. Man can in almost all climates attain to a great age; but people in general do not attain to the greatest. 6 Places that stand high have in general more and purer air than those which stand low, though here also there is a certain limitation, and the rule the higher the better' cannot thus be laid down. The greatest degree of height is, on the contrary, prejudicial to longevity; and Switzerland, without doubt the highest country in Europe, has produced fewer instances of long life than Scotland. The In cold climates men in general live longer than in warm. people of Finland, for instance, keep their youth and live to a great age; their hair does not turn grey nor their joints become stiff until long past the usual period of middle life. The influence of salt water is also more favourable to longevity than that of fresh, and for that reason seafaring people can compare favourably with dwellers on |