is clear that they have little in common | missionaries have been ready to confess with the negroish races to the west of that Fijian Christianity is very superficial, them. But and that it would probably disappear toReturning to Thakombau, who is at morrow in a reaction to fetichism if the the present time a rather feeble old man white influence were withdrawn. of nearly seventy, it must be conceded what has been achieved is not the less that according to his lights he has done creditable, and the fact that the chiefs his best to maintain a proper rule among have very rarely permitted men to be his own people since he became Chris- taken by the planters for a longer period tian and the white men have flocked into than twelve months, and then only under Fiji, but his position as well as that of the some sort of guarantee for their good other great chiefs has been a very diffi-treatment and proper payment, may be cult one. What with the white men who attributed almost entirely to the influadvised him, and the white men who ence of the Wesleyan missionaries, who bullied him, and the white men who per- in some instances have gone even besisted in making a "king" of him, to say yond what was justifiable in their zeal nothing of the naval captains who were for the interests of the natives. We be"proclaiming" and presenting "peti-lieve that most of them are now in fations" to him, the old man, clever as he vour of annexation to England as the is, became completely confused. No only way of preventing serious encoundoubt he and his followers would be ters between the Fijians and the planters. heartily glad if, retaining their present On the whole it is unlikely that any great advantages, they could clear every white difficulty will be experienced in forming man out of the group, but the constant a Government which will be much to the appearance of men-of-war puts that out of advantage of all the Christianized tribes, the question. Accordingly, he is ready while the few thousand cannibals who enough to surrender his nominal suprem- still linger among the mountains will acy, and end his days in peace. Fond as gradually yield to the central authority. he is of money and power, he has seen It is to be hoped, however, that the first clearly enough that for the last three governor appointed may be a man who years he has been merely a tool in the has had previous experience in dealing hands of the unscrupulous whites around with a mixed community, and one not inhim. It is the same with the other great clined to work out new crotchets at the chiefs, who, so long as they are permitted expense of the people whom he is comto exercise authority over their respect-missioned to rule. ive confederations, will be glad enough to give up to others the difficult task, to them, of dealing with the whites. Unfortunately, the grog-bottle has taken fast hold of nearly all the chiefs of Fiji, and when Thakombau and Maafu die it will be no easy matter to find sober successors to them. The effect of Christianity upon chiefs and people is outwardly very marked. Constant attendance at church, abstinence from the old Fiji dances, and a strict adherence to rules which have been laid down for their domestic guidance, are enforced by heavy fines and punishments. Native Christian teachers are provided for all the villages, and they almost overshadow the authority of the local chiefs. Polygamy and nearly all the devil-customs have been uprooted, and it is possible that a few may really comprehend the highly refined religion which has now been established among them for little short of a generation. It is clear, nevertheless, that the superstitions of former times die hard, and some of the more observant and plain-spoken From The Spectator. THE DOMESDAY BOOK OF SCOTLAND. WE wonder if the Domesday Book of Scotland is satisfactory to Lord Derby? His object in moving for the remarkable record which has just been presented to Parliament, and which will hereafter exercise no small influence upon politics, was to dissipate a popular delusion, viz., that the land of Great Britain belonged to very few persons, indeed, as it was imagined, to less than 30,000 individuals. He maintained that there was no authority for this belief, that there were prob ably half-a-million owners of the soil, and requested an inquiry so full as to include a nominal roll of every man or woman owning more than one acre, or holding land on a lease of not less than ninetynine years. The Peers, who knew perfectly well that if the limit were fixed low enough, and the long leases of the cities included, the number of owners would - Duke of Sutherland seem large, consented, and the first Di- omitted every man just under the 20,000 vision of the New Domesday Book acres, the single exception being Lord that for Scotland-has now been pre- Lothian, who must have some outlying sented to both Houses. It is an admir- bit sufficient to make up his fractional able return, a monument of patient re-difference. One man alone in his own search and indomitable inquisitiveness, right and his wife's holds more than a and requires but two improvements to be fifteenth of the entire area of the kingperfect. The first is a separation be- dom, and 21 men own nearly a third, a tween leaseholders and freeholders, the proportion probably exceeding anything absence of which greatly and, in our known in Western Europe. There are vast judgment, unfairly increases the appar- estates in South Italy, no doubt, and in ent number of the latter; and the sec- Austria, and in Spain; but except in the ond is a note to remind the reader that instance of grandees of the latter counthe person mentioned has property in try, they are held by families, and not by more than one county. Apart from this, individuals. We have abstained rigidly the work has been most patiently done; from adding anything to the avowed ownbut whether Lord Derby, who under-ership of the individual, except, in one or stands statistics, will approve the result, two cases, his predecessor's "Trusts," is a most doubtful question. Of course which, on expiry, rejoin the main properthe Tory papers, reading the Abstract, ty-and this is the result: and finding that the total number of owners is stated at 131,530, have raised their usual pæan of exultation over "those prejudiced Liberals;" but unfortunately the statement is true only to the ear, being in the sense in which the inquiry was ordered ludicrously and flagrantly false. Nobody was inquiring about borough property, or about the owners of single cottages with less than an acre round them, and apart from these two classes, the whole of Scotland outside the cities is owned or leased by 17,151 persons, of whom a large section own less This number includes all who own even one acre - many hundreds own but two- even by a lease which was originally given for 99 years, and shows that the average ownership of Scotland, which contains nineteen millions of acres, is a block of 1,100 acres,-a result of no use in itself, but indicating the presence of an unusual number of enormous proprietors. This, accordingly, we find to be the case, there being no less than 106 who hold more than 20,000 acres of land, and among them 52 who hold more than 50,000 acres. We give a list of these men, drawn up as accurately as we can manage, the only doubtful case in our own mind being the Duke of Roxburghe, who must have a fourth estate somewhere which we have failed to find, and the list shows past all doubt or question that 106 persons hold within a fraction half the whole extent of Scotland. From the method of calculation we have adopted, two or three men may have more than we have said — for example, Balfour of Whittinghame, whom it is necessary to hunt through an actuary but no one can hold less. Moreover, we have sternly than 20 acres. Duke of Richmond Sir K. Mackenzie of Gairlock Lord Macdonald Sir C. W. Ross Acres. 1,176,343 149,879 406,070 220,433 437,690 432,183 306,000 300,000 270,000 255,000 194,000 63,000 62,000 61,700 60,000 Balfour of Whittinghame Lord Middleton Countess of Home Earl of Dunmore Sir J. Ramsden Mr. J. Baird E. H. Scott (Harris) Sir W. Gordon Cumming Lady Menzies Sir A. D. Stewart R. S. Menzies Dowager Lady Ashburton Sir G. Dunbar Acres. true, as Sir C. W. Ross has 55,000 acres, 60,000 and Sir James Matheson owns a petty 60,000 morsel of 18,500 acres in Sutherlandshire, 60,000 and Gordan Macleod has 11,000, and E. 59,700 C. Sutherland-Walker 20,000, and there 55,000 are nineteen other freeholders of more 54,500 than 100 acres; but the Duke does own with his wife, the Countess of Cromartie 46,000-where, by the way, they have not ap45,000 parently an acre- more than the entire 45,000 surface of any county in England except 43,000 Yorkshire and Lincolnshire. It is a pop42,000 ular delusion to suppose also that the 39,500 Duke of Argyll owns Argyllshire, his 39,500 share being less than a tenth; but he and 38,000 the other Campbell, the Earl of Breadal36,400 bane, own 340,000 acres of it between 36,000 them, stretching from the Western Isles 36,000 to the Eastern frontier of the county, 35,000 where Lord Breadalbane's Perthshire 33,000 property carries on the story to the head 33,000 of Loch Tay. We have taken no account 32,700 of families, and have no room for petty 32,400 lairds with only 10,000 or 15,000 acres ; 32,000 but no one can read the Scotch" Domes31,500 day Book," with its columns of properties held by Campbells, Kerrs, Scotts, Stewarts, Macleods, Ramsays, and so on, without perceiving how ownership has 28,800 been developed. The Chiefs' right to a 27,000 part of the produce of the soil has grad26,800 ually hardened into ownership; 25,500 where they have split their estates, ne25,000 cessarily vast, for they were the estates 25,000 of tribes, it has been usually among their 25,000 own families. The men not heads of clans who have bought great estates are few, though three of them, Sir James 24,000 Matheson, the China merchant, of whose 24,000 birth we know nothing, but who was once 24,000 a penniless clerk in Calcutta; Mr. Evan It will, of course, be observed that the amount of revenue obtained from these estates is not now commensurate with 22,000 their acreage, the Duke of Sutherland's, 21,000 for instance, being valued at only a shil21,000 ling an acre, while there are small estates 20,000 valued at two pounds; but that is the very evil of which we complain, as the 20,000 result of these huge aggregations of the surface of the kingdom. They keep down cultivation, improvement, and, above all, building. The Duke of Sutherland, for example, is said to be a good landlord, and is certainly an active one, but can any one believe that he can or does manage his gloomy deserts as a hundred proprietors would with 11,000 acres apiece, and the whip of necessity behind 20,000 20,000 20,000 20,000 20,000 9,350,884 The popular idea that the Duke of Sutherland owns an entire county is not These vast blocks will one day tempt confiscation, as the estates of the Patroons did in New York State; but it is not in confiscation, but in change of tenure, in the abolition of the power of eviction, except for non-payment of a rent revised like the tithe, that improvement is ultimately to be found. The Duke of Sutherland does what he can, it is said, particularly if he sees his way to profit, in which he is quite right, profit being the measure of success in agricultural improvement; but no fortune could bear the expenditure Sutherlandshire needs for its improvement, and there are worse cases than Sutherlandshire. There are tracts of immense extent where the landlord could no more do what is needed to we Debt, and is merely in the capitalist's them to make them inventive, to compel them to grant "feus," to seek for minerals, to invite colonists, to apply that patient, minute care to arboriculture out of which some great proprietors have obtained so much? There are hillsides in Perthshire where a shilling an acre has become ten shillings merely by oak planting, not for timber, a slow and wearying process, but for bark. What can work for ten hours a day bring to a Duke with sufficient English revenues, or why should he bore himself to reclaim a moor? Sutherlandshire is bad enough, and its rent-roll but a poor one; but plant it down in Switzerland as a Canton, and a community of freeholders would very soon make it a comfortable, or at least an endurable, residence for a hundred thou-be done than he could pay the National sand people. Does anybody honestly think that the vast property of the two Campbells, stretching almost from sea to sea across the very waist of Scotland, would not, if held by a hundred men, instead of two, become twice as populous as it is now, and four times as wealthy and productive? The land, no doubt, is poor, but it is of the kind for which capital, patience, and incessant labour could and would do miracles, for which its present owners feel no need, and which they would make no especial exertion to secure. They will say, or rather their agents for them will say, that such effort would be useless; but let them help as legislators to enfranchise the land till they are owners in fee-simple, and then offer to all comers feu-tenures, tenures in perpetuity, and see the prices they will from the very first obtain. We do not want to deprive them of an inch of their lands, rather, by abolishing the power of settlement and entail, we would increase indefinitely their proprietory rights; but we want to see other rights allowed to grow up under them, paying them neither by votes, nor service, nor respect, but by increased cash rentals. Old Coke, of THE HISTORY OF POPULAR VOTING IN Norfolk, in a lifetime would double the rental of Taymouth Castle, triple the THE process known in France as a plépopulation of that glorious property, and biscite, and commonly spoken of among increase its actual produce indefinitely, us as a Napoleonic invention, is familiar losing nothing the while, except a quasi- enough to the Swiss people as an ordinafeudal power, which he ought not to have.ry part of their constitutional machinery. The Duke of Argyll knows well the evil that in India is produced by the absence of the sense of property, yet from Iona to the German Ocean that sense is almost as absent as in Bombay. You cannot buy an acre, and unless the system has very recently altered, you cannot obtain a farm with absolute security of tenure. From The Pall Mall Gazette. SWITZERLAND. As such it was used to crown the work of consolidation rendered necessary after the overthrow of the Sonderbund by the Protestant cantons in 1848. It was employed in a contrary direction at the defeat of the Revisionist party last year, when an unexpected alliance of the whole of the extreme Liberals with the Ultramontanes THE HISTORY OF POPULAR VOTING IN SWITZERLAND. 575 enabled the latter to administer a severe And it was doubtless owing to this recheck to that movement towards central- action that Lucerne and Vaud, two of the ization which they had just reason to most populous of the cantons and zealdread. And now a complete revulsion of ously Catholic as regards the majority of feeling, taking its rise in the religious their citizens, were found casting their struggle which is going on throughout votes on the side of the victors. In Fricentral Europe, has resolved the victors bourg, another Catholic canton, the of 1873 into their naturally opposed ele- Grand Council exercised the right it in ments, and reversed the national verdict those days had of casting the cantonal then pronounced. The ultra-Liberals, vote, and gave it also in favour of the new or, as they are oftener called, the French- Federative Constitution, which was thus Radical party of the south-west cantons formally established by its individual acof the Confederation, have gone over in a ceptance throughout the States to be body to the reforming party. The direct bound, except six and a half of them, of result is that the revisionists, who were which one, the Tessin canton, had voted beaten by a very small majority last year, to accept it "conditionally." Of the have now an immense preponderance in cantons that positively rejected it, the the popular vote, and have carried two- only one of importance in population was thirds of the cantons. It must be re- the Valais, the others being Schwytz, membered that they were bound to win Zug, Uri, the two Unterwalds, and Apthe majority of these as States, as well as penzell Interior. The constitution thus to gain a majority of the votes of the coun- confirmed in 1848 was by its strict terms try to their side, in order to pass their re- to be revised at the end of twenty years, form bill; and that last year they only but it was not until 1873 that the necessucceeded in winning ten of the cantons, sary legislative work for this purpose was whereas now they have prevailed in all completed, and once more submitted to except seven, and the half-canton of Ap- the popular vote for ratification. The repenzell known as Appenzell Interior. sult was on this occasion a very different The twenty-two cantons of Switzerland, one. The other half of Appenzell had it should be noted, form for all practical gone over to the anti-centralists; so had administrative purposes twenty-five, as the great Catholic cantons of Lucerne, Basle, Appenzell, and Unterwald are each Fribourg, the Grisons, and Vaud, and subdivided into two separate govern- the two lesser but very important Liberments. But the two Appenzells and two al and French-speaking States of NeufUnterwalds count for but a single canton chatel and Geneva. The total of the adeach for the purposes of the Federation, verse votes was recorded as 260,859, and thus reduce the total votes of the against 255,609 favourable votes, and the cantons to twenty-three. A brief survey proposed revision was therefore rejected of the three great plébiscites of 1848, 1873. on the popular vote, as it was also by the and 1874, shows how the tide of popular decision of the cantons as States, there feeling on religious and political questions being thirteen against it and only ten for has swept forward and backward over a it. The causes of this reactionary vote country where thought and discussion have been already sufficiently indicated. are as free and active as among ourselves, The strength of the feeling in the southand every public measure is as widely west cantons against the dominant Gerdebated. In 1848, when the so-called man element, which produced the coali"Pact of 1815," which made of the Swiss tion of 1873, has not been able to counonce more an independent European peo-terbalance during the past twelvemonth ple, but left them still a mere aggregate the growing animosity against the Ultraof separate petty States, had to give way montanes, and of the six cantons which to a more really Federal Government, have been named as going over in 1873 the result of the voting was of course to the anti-centralists, the Grisons, Vaud, strongly influenced by the recent success Geneva, and Neufchatel have now secedof the constitutional or centralist party, ed from that alliance, and voted for the who had just put down by force of arms enlargement of the Federal authority. the Sonderbund, or attempt of the Fribourg and Lucerne, on the contrary, Catholic cantons to form a distinct con- have adhered to the vote of last year, but federacy of their own. There was a very the Tessin, on the other hand, has for bitter reaction in some of these cantons the first time become completely Federeven against the Jesuit intrigues which alist. So that the minority of 1873 behad produced the civil war and the con- comes a majority of 321,876 against 177,sequent humiliation of the Catholics. 800, and the accepting cantons are |