ROYAL COURT.

SENTENCE IN THE AFFAIR OF THE COMMERCIAL ARCADE.

26th April, 1836.—Before Daniel De Lisle Brock, Esq., Bailiff, John Guille, John Le Mesurier, John Hubert, John Le Marchant, William Collings, H. O. Carré, P. B. Dobrée, T. W. Gosselin, Thomas Le Retilley, and Harry Dobrée, Esqrs., Jurats.

THE Court this day assembled by virtue of an Order of His Majesty in Council, dated the 23rd of February, 1836, to determine the conditions of sale of the property belonging to Messrs. Le Boutillier, Edmund Richards, and Frederick De Lisle, has fixed upon the following conditions:

1. The sale shall take place on the first Wednesday of next June, at eleven o'clock in the forenoon, in the Arcade forming part of the said property, before the Bailiff or his Lieutenant, Peter Bonamy Dobrée, and Thomas Le Retilley, Jurats, Commissioners of the Royal Court; and it shall include the whole of the houses, land, dependences, and materials belonging to the Arcade, as well as the house, materials, and ground situate in Berthelot-street.

2. The last bidder, offering the highest price, shall be declared to be the purchaser; and the property shall then be adjudged and conveyed to him on the following conditions.

3. The whole property shall be put up at the price of 305 quarters, two bushels of wheat rent, and Ten Thousand Pounds sterling, Guernsey currency. No single bidding to be less than Fifty Pounds sterling.

4. The purchaser shall be obliged, immediately after the conclusion of the sale, to deposit in the hands of the Commissioners of the Court, Five Hundred Pounds sterling, Guernsey currency, on account of the purchase money, under the penalty of a similar sum, and the nullification of the sale.

5. The contract of sale shall be completed and passed within one month after the day of sale; and the purchaser shall be compelled to pay, on the contract of sale being passed, into the hands of the Commissioners of the Court, One Thousand Pounds sterling, under the penalty of forfeiting the first sum of Five Hundred Pounds, required to be deposited by the fourth article, and also of the nullification of the sale.

6. The remainder of the purchase money shall be paid to the said Commissioners in three instalments: to wit, one-third in three months after passing the contract of sale; one-third in six months; and the remainder in twelve months; the whole, with interest at the rate of 5 per cent. per annum, which interest is to be reckoned from the date of the first month after the contract of sale is passed. The obligation to make these payments shall be inserted in the

said contract, reserving, however, to the pur. chaser the power of completing his purchase in full, if he is so minded, before the expiration of the periods fixed. And in case the first of these three instalments be not paid at the date fixed, the purchaser shall forfeit the Fifteen Hundred Pounds already deposited, and the sale shall be declared null and void.

7. The proprietors and their wives shall consent, not later than the sixteenth of next May, to a special and irrevocable power of attorney, authorizing an attorney to renounce to the dowers of the said wives on the property of their respective husbands, so far as such property is included in the sale to which these conditions refer and this on the penalty of Five Hundred Pounds sterling, to be paid by the husband whose wife shall have refused to sign the power of attorney on or before the sixteenth of May.

8. The purchaser shall be put into possession of the property immediately after the contract of sale is passed, shall pay one quarter of the ground rent due for the year 1836,-and receive the rents of the houses from the 24th day of next June.

9. The sums received by the said Commis. sioners shall be applied to liquidate liabilities registered on the estate of the proprietors, if any remain not discharged; also to the payment of arrears of ground rent, and other admitted debts: and the surplus, if any, shall be divided among the proprietors in the proportion of their respective rights. And the said proprietors are declared equal in all their rights, one towards the other, as to the articles of partnership account

between them.

10. All demands, mortgages, and engage. ments of whatsoever nature, registered on the inheritances of the actual proprietors, must be vacated and withdrawn before the contract of sale is passed, unless the purchaser consents to their being continued registered on the pur. chased property. And in case the sums regis. tered do not appear to be cancelled, it shall be competent to the Commissioners to apply the instalments which they have received to the liquidation of such registries.

11.-Whatever penalties may be assessed by virtue of these conditions, shall be applied to the benefit of the proprietors according to their res. pective interests in the estate. And if one of them becomes the purchaser, and is adjudged to pay the said penalties, they shall be applied to the benefit of the other two.

(Signed)

CHARLES LEFEBVRE,
His Majesty's Registrar.

TO CORRESPONDENTS.

In reply to the letter of "A GUERNSEYMAN," we have to observe, that in our next number we shall commence a series of articles on the Anglo-Norman Institutions, so as to present, what our corres pondent scems to desire, some historical facts relating to the manners, customs, and laws of the ancestors of the present inhabitants of the Channel Islands.

We have received the acrostic signed "C." We are much obliged to him for his good wishes, but his compliment smacks too much of a puff.

The letter of "CAUSTIC," animadverting on the Guernsey Militia, is too scurrilous for our pages. We have unceremoniously consigned it to the flames, and beg to be pestered no more with personalities.

S BARBET, PRINTER, NEW-STREET, GUERNSEY.

THE

GUERNSEY & JERSEY MAGAZINE.

JUNE, 1836.

ON NATIONAL WEALTH.

In continuing this article from our last number, we have now to consider the respective rights and duties of the three sections of society, so far as they affect the stability and progress of national wealth. To render such an inquiry useful, we must regard the spirit of the age in which we live,its wants and its necessities,—our home and foreign trade, the influence of the funding system,—and the mixed circulation of money, in the double form of paper and the precious metals. We must look at things as they actually exist, and set aside all prejudices in favour of institutions which might have been beneficial in past times, but may be quite incompatible with our present position. We must consider that England is not now a purely agricultural country, but a manufacturing country; not a large farm, but a large workshop. Measures, therefore, should be adopted to keep the commercial system moving onwards, for, should it become stationary, while population increases, utter ruin must be the inevitable consequence. It should be remembered, that all persons now born, or to be born, come into existence with a previous mortgage on their time, industry, and skill, in the shape of the national debt; though it is true, and the fact ought not in candour to be overlooked, that they become immediate participators in the improved condition of the country. They do not draw their first breath in a wilderness, nor are they surrounded by barbarian institutions, but commence their existence in the midst of art and science, law and government. These advantages may be looked at in the nature of a set-off against the mortgage on national capital and labour, but, at the same time, unless those advantages can be made available to their full extent, free from any monopoly or exclusive preferences, their value is not real, but only apparent.

In the present state of England, we take it for granted that the produce of the soil could never pay the dividends, or the annual charges of govern. ment indeed, it appears that the profits of agriculture barely suffice to maintain the farmer and pay rents. From the surplus proceeds of the Vol. I.-No. 6.

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land, therefore, the national creditor has nothing to hope. Were that the only source of wealth, bankruptcy would be inevitable. Hence it is certain that the landlords or territorial aristocracy are the least efficient members of the state, in reference to our present financial system. But such is the force of prejudice and long standing custom, that, though they have become the least useful section of the community, they are still permitted to retain exclusive privileges, to the detriment of those who have become the most useful. In the days of feudalism, the barons defrayed all the expenses of war, that obligation being the tenure by which they held their estates; but now they retain their lands, free from this tax, and the army estimates are levied on the funds of the nation at large. They were also saddled with many other expenses, from which their estates are now released, and still they have not paid any commuted equivalent to the nation. But the worst of their privileges, in a financial point of view, is the law of primogeniture, which has exterminated the yeomanry of England, demoralized the Irish peasant, and crippled the manufacturing and shipping interests of the nation at large.

It is a singular spectacle to behold the land of a civilized country concentrated in a few hands; to view the privileged holders invested with a power of refusing its cultivation, unless a part of the produce be given to them for the permission; to acknowledge their right of preventing their fellow-creatures from building a house on the soil, without paying an annual compensation in the shape of ground rent. It is a kind of international alien act, for the natives are as completely divested of the uses of the ground as an African or a Chinese. But this political phenomenon assumes a still more wonderful character, when we know that only one individual of the privileged family can inherit the advantages enjoyed by his father, the eldest son taking all, to the exclusion of his brothers and sisters. We trace the origin of this practice to the barbarism of the feudal age, and if we seek for the perpetuating principle of a system so repugnant to national justice and domestic affection, we shall find it to consist in pride and vanity. What is a title without a large fortune? A piece of gingerbread with the gilding stripped from the surface. Wolves and hyænas, the most savage of the brute creation, nurture all their offspring with impartial care; but they know nothing of the Herald's College; man alone is deaf to the cries of nature, and sacrifices the beings whom he has brought into existence for that prostituted bauble, nicknamed a "title of honour." Before the French revolution, the younger members of the aristocracy, particularly the females, were immured in convents and nunneries, and forced to take the vows of celibacy, in order that all the rental of the patrimonial estate might exclusively belong to the eldest son; for what signified an outrage on the laws of nature, compared with the splendour of a coronet! The reformation, having destroyed these refuges for the destitute in England, deprived our nobility of similar

tombs for the living, in consequence of which, the junior scions of patrician families were sent out to plunder the natives of our colonial possessions. What has been the result in the two countries? The French noblesse have been swept away from the face of the earth, and the law of primogeniture has been abolished. In reference to England, America has thrown off the yoke of her transatlantic oppressors, and domestic justice, slow but sure, has recently stripped the peers of their nomination boroughs. Well may we say with Jefferson, one of the illustrious presidents of America, "Whatever is morally wrong, can never be politically right;" and who will deny that it is morally wrong to disinherit every child in a family but one? Judge of the tree by the fruit and will not experience tell you, that the eldest son of a patrician family is most frequently a fool, a libertine, or a gamester, miserable to himself and useless to mankind?

The effects, direct and indirect, of the law of primogeniture on national wealth, have been, and still continue to be, of the most baneful character. It has extinguished the race of small farmers, and the once famed yeomanry of England only exist in history. By the consolidation of farms, there is now only one tenant in a parish, where there used to be twenty, and thus the middle rank of the agriculturists has been destroyed. The enclosure acts have robbed the poor labourer of his right of common, so that he cannot, as his ancestors were wont to do, keep either a cow or a pig, to compensate for the reduction of his wages. The two extremes of society are thus thrown into a state of the most frightful demoralization; the rich, from a superfluity of wealth; the poor, from the abject desolation of their misery. That honest pride, which was once the boast and glory of the English peasant, is faded and gone with his independence. And what has the landlord gained by this monstrous policy? In grasping at the shadow, has he not lost the substance? Can he hope permanently to secure his rent, by debasing and pauperizing the rural population? Already the truth flashes on their minds; they see the gulph yawning beneath their feet; they now refuse all parochial relief whatever, and hope that the recent poor bill will enable them to roll in wealth, while the millions die of starvation. Miserable infatuation! when did tyranny, in the long fight, ever prevail over justice? Have a Charles and a Louis perished on the scaffold in vain, and must fresh victims be offered up to the Moloch of aristocracy!

From Great Britain, turn the scene to Ireland, and there behold in rankest luxuriance the evils of primogeniture. If the soil of Ireland were barren, her climate ungenial, and her population stricken with mental imbecility, or crippled by physical weakness, these causes might account for her poverty. But the reverse of the supposition is the truth. Were the calamities, which afflict that unfortunate country, confined to particular districts, or were they of a temporary or superficial character, the mere

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efflux of time might restore her to a sound and healthful vigour. But a retrospect of past times dissipates this illusion, and exhibits one continued scene of commercial wretchedness and intellectual debasement. It is useless, nay, it is criminal, to deny the fact. The malady of Ireland is not a mere local inflammation; it is not confined to the surface it is a deep-seated disease, a pestilent virus flowing through every vein and artery of the body politic. We have shown that her demoralization cannot be ascribed to natural causes; we must, then, seek for it in some artificial cause, and we firmly believe that it is to be found in the law of primogeniture.

The real fund of wages is capital; but Ireland has none. But why has she none? Because all her surplus produce is carried out of the country. To whom is it conveyed? To an absentee aristocracy, in whose hands the law of primogeniture concentrates the fruits of Irish industry. Were that hateful law repealed, it is certain that she would gradually receive an accession of resident country gentlemen, who would displace those ravenous wolves, called the middle men, and spend their rentals in the neighbourhood from which they were drawn. The immediate effect would be to increase the amount of fixed capital, and the accumulating profits derived from it would in turn augment the circulating capital. The fund of wages would thus be enlarged, and wages themselves would at once rise in amount. A class of small tradesmen would spring up in her villages, to supply the demand of the operatives. A stimulus would thus be given to the operations of the wholesale merchants and manufacturers, who in turn would give a fresh impetus to the shipping interests. Now, it is obvious that the first link in this commercial chain is the wages of labour, for the working classes, on account of their number, must always give the greatest encouragement to the production of commodities, because their united demand is always the greatest. But what stimulus to trade can be expected from a population whose maximum of wages is only sixpence per day? to whom potatoes with butter milk is a positive luxury, but whose customary food is a dry potatoe with a sprinkling of salt!

Suppose

Capital is the surplus of production over consumption. population stationary, and the surplus of any country to be spent in a foreign land, then there could be no addition to the capital of the producing country, and it would continue stationary. But this is an untenable supposition, for population will advance, unless checked by disease or famine; therefore, a country so circumstanced must retrograde. Now this is precisely the case of Ireland. Her numbers are annually aug

menting, while her fixed and circulating capital continue stationary. Her surplus finds its way into the pockets of absentees, who spend it in improving the post roads; and supporting the hotels, of the continent. Were it expended in local improvements, it would be clear gain to Ireland.