Legislative Action 143 



tions. Mr Pratt indeed argues that "a trustworthy society or 

 combination " would offer to the landlord the necessary security for 

 his purchase-money or his annual rent. But the division of the land 

 is necessarily an experiment even for an association, and the landlord 

 might well remain long in doubt as to its power to pay, however 

 convinced he might be of its goodwill. 



But where an Association is backed by a County Council, so that 

 the fear of compulsory hiring is before the landlord's eyes, and the 

 Council becomes security for the Association for a certain amount, as 

 by law it may, the way to a satisfactory agreement becomes much 

 easier. The powers given by the Act of 1907 enable the official body 

 to work in with the voluntary association. The latter retains its 

 economic advantages, but it is strengthened, where it feels the need, 

 by the authoritative backing of the Council. It is always to be 

 remembered that the authority of the State only comes into play, in 

 this matter of the creation of small holdings, for the purpose of 

 removing hindrances from the path of a socially and economically 

 beneficial development. Where small holdings develop spontaneously, 

 or where voluntary associations find it easy to call them into being, there 

 the Council remains out of action. But where difficulties stand in the 

 way of the satisfaction of a real demand for such holdings, there is the 

 sphere of the Acts of 1892 and 1907. And here again the authority 

 attempts in the first place to bring about a voluntary agreement. 

 Only if such an agreement cannot be arrived at does the provision for 

 compulsion come into force. The greater the hindrances, the stronger 

 are the means at the disposal of the authorities for their abolition. 



The essential provisions of the Act of 1907 have now been out- 

 lined ; and it should have become evident why it is that the Act may 

 justly be entitled an agrarian reform. It aims at so transforming the 

 conditions of landownership that they may no longer be a hindrance 

 to the development of small holdings in English agriculture, suited as 

 that development is to the modern circumstances of the agricultural 

 market. The miscarriage of the Act of 1892 in no way proved that 

 the small holdings movement has no future. On the contrary, the 

 strong demand for such holdings, as brought before the County 

 Councils, and the manifold successes of grouped small holdings where 

 such were created, showed that the economic conditions, so far as 

 they depend on the unit of holding, are favourable to the develop- 

 ment. But what the results of the Act did prove was that the 

 existing conditions of landownership were so unfavourable as to 

 counteract the favourable economic conditions ; and that some more 



