Social and Political Aspects 119 



be found to contain some such important item as " shooting good " ; 

 or "good shooting, hunting and fishing"; or "choice sporting estate." 

 Obviously, the demand for land for such purposes as these, more 

 especially in view of the limited supply, must raise its exchange value 

 above the capitalised annual profit. Although the actual price of 

 land may have fallen in the last two or three decades, the wealthy 

 purchaser finds compensation for the small return obtainable for his , 

 capital in the non-economic advantages of landownership. The rents \ 

 may be small, but he has the satisfaction of being a landlord ; and so | 

 long as this is his object, he is ready to pay more for the land than I 

 its strictly economic value would warrant. "There are landlords 

 holding even large estates to whom it is not a matter of serious issue 

 whether they get any profit from their estates 1 " : and there are others 

 who find farming "the pleasantest of recreations, giving health and 

 pleasure far beyond yachting and horses," even if the " farm accounts 

 year by year show a substantial balance on the wrong side 2 ." 



This difference between the capitalised annual profit and the 

 exchange value is however a serious matter for the man who wants 

 to buy a small property and to live on its produce. He has to pay, 

 in the enhanced purchasing price, for a quality of the land which is 

 of no value to him, since what he is concerned with is simply the 

 economic possibilities of the holding. All this is especially true of 

 the neighbourhood of large towns ; and as the excellent means of 

 communication in England bring the townsman rapidly and cheaply 

 into the country, the word " neighbourhood " is here of wide significa- 

 tion. If the purchaser of a small dairy-farm of, say, 20 acres, has to 

 pay, besides the price reckoned in the ordinary way upon the profits, 

 a " super-price " determined by the amount which a city capitalist is 

 willing to pay for the property as a shooting-box or country residence, 

 it naturally becomes doubtful whether the small owner, even if he 

 does well, will be able to get from the land an adequate return upon 

 his capital. This is the great difficulty in the way of a revival of j 

 small properties. 



But the development of small tenant-farming, by the cutting up 

 of large farms into small, is also faced with difficulties arising out of 

 the problem of landownership in England. These difficulties become 

 burning questions where small agriculturists have not the capital for 

 the purchase of land, but have the means and capacity to rent a small 

 holding. The difficulty in this case arises from the fact that it 



1 W. J. Maiden, The Conversion of Arable Land into Pasture, 1898, p. 25. 



2 Haggard, op. cit. Vol. I, p. 160. 



