of interest in the proceedings of the Commission which, albeit conducted occasionally with a spirited eye to the gallery, were far from being exhilarating.

For the length at which this question of evidence has been treated, no apology is offered; the importance of it is vital; it goes to the root of the question whether the recommendations of the majority of the Commission are worthy of serious consideration or not. It is one thing to call a man a robber and prove the charge to the satisfaction of reason; it is quite another thing to base the accusation on a statement, which may be untrue in itself, that somebody else has said something to that effect which may, wilfully or ignorantly, be misrepresented in the repetition. It is to any conclusions based on this kind of evidence that the most strenuous objection is raised.

The second point of objection raised against the Welsh Land Commission at the end of the preceding chapter was that it gave an immensely wide definition to the terms of reference, and thus wasted a great deal of public time and money. It must be said at once that this is a public grievance rather than one of which Welshmen have an individual right to complain. If the Commission chose to hear the opinions of Mr. Pritchard Morgan, M.P., on goldmining royalties, opinions which had nothing of novelty in them, or to listen while a Druidical newspaper reporter discoursed on the precarious state of the Rockingstone, or to encourage the reading of long essays purporting to embody the history of medieval or pre-mediæval Wales, no great harm was done. Only, we take leave to say, those subjects are omitted in this volume as being of no practical importance. Again, if the Commission was pleased to question Lord Penrhyn's chief land agent as to his title to certain lands, and to re-open the question between the Duke of Beaufort and the Swansea Corporation as to the foreshore at Swansea, it mattered very little. For Lord Penrhyn's agent

firmly declined to make reply upon a matter which was as foreign to his duties as it was outside the scope of the Commission, and the Duke of Beaufort's advisers were not to be drawn into arguing before a mixed Commission, containing but one professional lawyer, a question which had been settled once and for all by those very competent judges who formed the Court of Exchequer fifty years ago. Nor, perhaps, did it matter much that the Commissioners should by question invite witnesses to describe and define the methods of religious instruction used at elementary schools, or the statistics of illegitimacy in various districts. These things were wanton waste of public money; that is all; and they are mentioned here partly as illustrative of the intellectual capacity and power of adhering to the main issues which characterised the body appointed to inquire into a great problem, and partly to reassure the general student of the evidence. He may learn with pleasure that a good third of the thousands of pages is absolutely irrelevant; but enough remains to remind us of Macaulay's criticism of Dr. Nares's Burleigh of which, we shrewdly suspect, the report itself will remind us also:

"The title is as long as an ordinary preface; the prefatory matter would furnish out an ordinary book, and the book contains as much reading as an ordinary library. We cannot sum up the merits of the stupendous mass of paper which lies before us better than by saying that it consists of about 2000 closely printed quarto pages, that it occupies 1500 inches cubic measure, and that it weighs 60 lbs. avoirdupois."

CHAPTER V.

Majority of the Commission started with Prejudice in Favour of a Land Court-Assertion justified by Selection of Questions-Treatment of Witnesses opposed to a Land Court-severe Cross-examination-Mr. Brynmor Jones, Q.C., M.P., and Colonel the Hon. W. E. Sackville West-Lord Carrington and Captain Stewart-the "Coffin letter" rejected by Lord Carrington-the Sequel in the Merionethshire Outrage-Lord Carrington and the ClergymanMr. Brynmor Jones insults some Montgomeryshire Farmers—the Commission fails to secure Evidence from Substantial and Representative Farmers.

AT the end of the third chapter the four main complaints raised against the majority of the Welsh Land Commission were summarised. Two of these have been dealt with in detail in Chapter IV.; two remain for treatment.

The Commission was appointed, as the history of its appointment clearly shows, to inquire into facts rather than into opinions. Those who placed it in office apparently desired that, as the result of investigation, a report should be laid before Parliament, and that this report should contain a picture of "the conditions under which land is held, occupied and cultivated in Wales and Monmouthshire," that is to say, of plain facts. From this picture, if it were painted well and faithfully, Parliament might, it was hoped, be able to form an opinion upon the question whether it was necessary to apply to this part of the United Kingdom legislation founded upon the principles, similar in point of principle to (or, to speak more accurately, in resolute disregard of economic principle), and differing in detail only from the Welsh Land Bills of

THE LAND QUESTION IN NORTH WALES.

91

Mr. Thomas Ellis, M.P., and Mr. J. Bryn Roberts, M.P., the recent Irish Land Acts, and the Crofters' Acts. Our third complaint against the majority of the members of the Welsh Land Commission is that they played undisguisedly the part of missionaries of the gospel of a Land Court; that they collected a number of expressions of opinion which were valueless, since they were given on the spur of the moment by persons who had given no thought to the subject, and by persons who, were they never so honest, had not the equipment of education and intelligence which would give weight to their judgment on a problem so complex; that where witnesses expressed themselves favourable to a Land Court they were led on by gentle and suggestive questions until they were in the realm of matters to which they had never given a moment's thought; that where witnesses expressed the contrary opinion they were cross-examined with a severity which stood in marked contrast to the tone adopted towards those who, from the point of view of the majority of the Commissioners, prophesied smooth things.

By way of preliminary it must be observed that for the purposes of this chapter a Land Court must be understood to be any form of tribunal endowed by the Legislature with the right of pronouncing, as between landowner and tenant, compulsory judgment upon the question of rent, since all other questions, whether of greater or less fixity of tenure, or of compensation for improvements, or like matters, stand quite apart from this question. Much curiosity was shown as to the precise meaning of the phrase "Land Court" at various times. On this point it may be observed that the phrase may never mean anything in Wales, and that if it ever possesses a meaning it will be defined by the Legislature. But it is quite clear that from the questions of various Commissioners that when they spoke of a Land Court they had in view, and the witnesses also had in view, some body which should possess the power to remove the question of rent from

the domain of contract, and to fix the rent of this or that holding by external authority.

Of the merits or demerits of such an institution it is not necessary to speak at this point. Our complaint, after exhaustive analysis of the evidence and of the questions put by various Commissioners, is that a majority of the Commissioners made it plain from the beginning that they were of opinion that such an institution would be for the benefit of the agricultural community.

To recapitulate the whole, or even a substantial fraction, of the suggestive and argumentative questions which soon produced this impression on the minds of persons who followed the proceedings of the Commission would be a process for which a long volume of close print would be necessary; and at the best a selection of extracts in cold print could hardly give an idea of the vast difference of tone between questions addressed to witnesses favourable to a Land Court and those who ventured to express the contrary opinion. We must rather ask the reader to have recourse to the evidence itself in order to form his own judgment as to the general tone of questions. Still it is desirable to give, even in the course of this brief text, a few instances to justify the statement that a majority of the Commissioners started upon their investigation with a preconceived idea that a Land Court was to be recommended. The Commissioners included in this assertion are the Chairman (Lord Carrington), Mr. Brynmor Jones, Mr. Grove, Mr. Richard Jones, and Mr. Griffiths. Principal Rhys appeared for the most part to be hovering between two opinions; that is to say, he asked a great number of questions which seemed to tend towards the establishment of a Land Court, but at Llangefni he protested that his ideas on the Land Court question were "hazy," as frankly as, at another sitting, he confessed his inability to understand the laws of political economy. For the advocates of a Land Court, whether they were competent to speak on