HOW TO SETTLE 197 



makes the successful cultivator, such a cultivator as we desire to 

 have. 



The precedent approaching nearest to our case in this matter of 

 land settlement is that pursued on a large scale, and on the whole 

 with excellent results, in Prussia, where very large tracts of land have 

 been settled with peasantry ; and there the officers entrusted with 

 the conduct of the work — having learnt the lesson by at first not 

 attending sufficiently to the point — bestow particular care — as they 

 have impressed upon me — upon the selection of properly qualified 

 men for admission to newly-created holdings. They have found 

 that men not really qualified make a hash of their business, and have 

 therefore become eclectic. Now they had hosts of applicants to 

 select from, among whom qualified men largely preponderated, as a 

 natural consequence of the prevalence of peasant husbandry. Lord 

 Ernie used the same circumspection when selecting among the 

 575 applicants for his eighteen holdings on the Duke of Bedford's 

 property at Maulden, in Bedfordshire, accepting men whom he could 

 trust to such an extent alike for knowledge of their craft and for 

 honesty, that he could place them in possession of their holdings 

 without asking for a penny of earnest money from them. Similar 

 cases have, as will be shown, occurred in Germany, in Belgium, in 

 Poland. With due care bestowed upon selection, there is really no 

 danger in this. For the man who takes his holding and puts the 

 little money that he possesses into its cultivation is, as a Prussian 

 Commissioner for this very business put it to me, not likely to leave 

 that money buried in a holding from which he runs away. That 

 is an altogether different matter from letting a man have a house, 

 which he may allow to go out of repair and then run away by 

 night. And every payment of an instalment which such man makes 

 is a new tie that binds him to the ground. 



Small cultivation is a craft that wants to be understood, if there 

 is to be success. And that understanding is not to be picked up 

 anyhow and hurriedly, after the venture has been entered upon. 

 Some of it no doubt may be so picked up. But there must be a 

 stock ready beforehand, upon which to graft such new slips. And 

 that stock wants to be insisted upon. That, no doubt, calls for a 

 little trouble. But, to act in disregard of this lesson gleaned from 

 experience and accept settlers higgledy-piggledy, indiscriminately, 

 just only because they apply and credit themselves with ability to 

 manage, complying with the formal conditions laid down — as giving 

 proof of their possession of the prescribed money disposable — is to 

 court failure. 



