On this page

• Text (2)

  Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.

  • 

    Untitled Article

  • 

    Untitled Article

• Transcript

  • Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.

    Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.

    Untitled Article

    Besides which , U seems probably that even for this complete dominion of Christian motives , we may have to be indebted to progressive improvements in education and government , conjointly with the intrinsic power and excellence of Christianity .

    Those who assert the impracticability of any plans of this kind forget how much institutions respecting property have varied , and that society has actually existed under various modifications of them . TEe accumulation

    of landed property was guarded against under the Jewish Theoeracy by the divine institution of the jubilee every 50 th year , when all the lands which had been sold or alienated , were re-divided among the people . Levit . xxv . 23 : " The land shall not be sold for ever ,

    for the land is mine , " &e . And m the Sabbatical year the produce of the land was to be common to all , and debts were to be remitted . ( See Belsham * & Sermon on the Jubilee *} Those who are disposed to consider the Mosaic

    as typical of the Christian dispensation , may easily discover , in the Sabbatical and Jubilee years , a type of the abolition of private property under the gospel . In some parts even of this country the laws are mueh less conducive to the accumulation of landed

    property than in others , and many changes , though mostly for the worse , have been made with respect to the tenure and descent of property : we hear much of the danger of innovations on pr ivate property , but little is said against the seandalous conversion of public into private property .

    A great part , perhaps all , of our lands were formerly shack lands , of which the occupant had the use only whilst his crop was on , the land then reverting to the community for pasturage . Even now the meer-bauks that separate the lands belong to the community , and the occupier of two adjoining fields has no right to plough up the meer-bauk between them .- — €€ All the lands in a

    district called the Theel-land , lying m the bailiwic of Norden and Bertum , " says a writer in the Edinburgh Review , " ' are held by a very extraordinary tenurewe speak in the present tense , for the customs of the Theel-laod were subsisting in 1805 , and we do not suppose that they have since become obsolete . The

    Untitled Article

    Agrarian law , elsewhere a phantom , either lovely or terrific , according to the imagination of the spectator , is here fully realized . The land is

    considered as being divided into portions or Theels , each containing a stated quantity : the owners are called Theelmen , or Theel-boors ; but no Theelboor can hold more than one Theel in

    severalty . The undivided , or common land , comprising the Theels not held by individuals , belongs to all the inhabitants of the Theel-land , and is cultivated or farmed out on their joint account . The Theel-boor cannot sell

    his hereditary Theel , or alienate it in any way , even to his nearest relations . On his death it descends to his youngest son . If there are no sons it descends ta the youngest daughter , under the restrictions after mentioned ; and in default of issue it reverts to the

    commonalty . But elder sons are not left destitute : when they are old enough to keep house , a Theel is assigned to each of them ( be they ever so many ) eut of the common lands , to be held to them and their issue , according to the customary tenure . If a woman who has inherited a Theel becomes

    the wife of a Theel-boor , who is already in possession of a Theel , then her land reverts to the commonalty . " * In the degree of civilization hitherto attained , law has interfered only to prevent the perpetration of violence

    $ nd the grosser kinds of fraud -f- in the acquisition of property , and to regulate in various ways its possession and conveyance . To equalize as much as possible the gifts of Providence amongst all , however consonant to reason ,

    benevolence , and Christianity , has been scarcely at all its object . The progress of improvement , and a sense of * Edinburgh Review , No . LXIIf ., for July 1819 , p . 10 , on the Laws of

    Friesland . For a most interesting account of this district , and of the happiness and prosperity prevailing in it in consequence of this system , see also Travels in the North of Germany , by Mr . Hodgkins . See also Tacitus de Moribus

    Germanorum , Cap . xxxvi . \ Chiefly , however , frauds which affect the rich . Those which are committed Uy them upon the poorer classes do not even incur reproach .

    Untitled Article

    The Nonconformist . NoY XX . $ 7

    Untitled Article

    VOL ,. XVI . O

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Feb. 2, 1821, page 97, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2497/page/33/