The changes recently made in the land laws of England and Scotland, and the activity of the advocates of further and more radical changes, have increased this hope.  Progressive English statesmen have long looked with disfavor upon entails and settlements, and there have been a number of enactments providing for cutting off entails and increasing the power of limited owners.  The last and most important of these, the Settled Estates Act, passed in 1882, gives the tenant for life power to sell any portion of the estate except the family mansion, and thus thoroughly undermines the principle upon which primogeniture and entails are founded.  Much land which has hitherto been so tied up that the limited owners were either unable or unwilling to develop it can now be sold and improved.  New measures have been proposed to increase still further the power of limited owners and to make the sale and transfer of land easier and less expensive.  Many able statesmen are advocates of these measures.  Mr. Goschen in a recent speech at Edinburgh urged the need of a land-register by which transfers of land might be made almost as cheaply and easily as transfers of consols.  By such an arrangement, it is held, many farmers of small capital will be enabled to buy their farms, and the land of the country will thus be dispersed among a much larger number of owners.  There has also been a very marked tendency to enlarge the rights and the authority of the tenant farmer.  The Agricultural Holdings Act of 1883 gives the tenant a right to compensation for temporary and, on certain conditions, for permanent improvements, and permits him in most cases, where he cannot have compensation, to remove fixtures or buildings which he has erected, contrary to the old doctrine that whatever is fixed to the soil becomes the property of the landlord.  The landlord’s power to distrain for rent is greatly reduced:  formerly he could distrain for six years’ rent, now he can distrain only for the rent of one year, and he is required to give the tenant twelve instead of six months’ notice to quit.  The tenant is therefore more secure than formerly in the possession of his farm and in spending money and labor in making improvements that will render it more productive.  Other changes are proposed, which will give him still more rights, greater freedom in the management of the farm, and additional encouragement to adopt the best methods of farming and invest his labor and money in improvements.  Many of the land reformers advocate the adoption of measures similar to those that have been enacted for Ireland.  It has for some time been one of the declared purposes of the Farmers’ Alliance to secure a system of judicial rents for the tenant farmers of England.  An important conference lately held at Aberdeen and participated in by representatives of both the English and Scottish Farmers’ Alliances adopted an outline of a land bill for England and Scotland, providing for the establishment of a land court, fixing fair rents, fuller compensation for improvements, and the free sale of the tenant’s interests.