CONCLUSION 347 



of useful and genuine community life, from which are likely to spring 

 great and beneficial developments. It is the absence of Church 

 influence which has in France in a great measure allowed the mischief 

 of Malthusianism — which acts as dry rot among the population — to 

 come to such a head, weakening the forces of the country not for 

 war only. God forbid that our rural folk should ever become 

 subject to it as to the regret of right-thinking men their brethren 

 have become in France. 



With the home, the holding, the requisite funds and community 

 life established, we may be held to have done with the social side of 

 the problem in hand, leaving only, as an appendix, the remunerative 

 employment of cultivating folk in off time, by suitable village 

 industries, just to hint at as a desirable support, to keep hands at 

 home, keep them from idleness and add to the family budget. 



Now for the agricultural side ! On the point what should be done, 

 there are serious differences of opinion. Practising agriculturists by 

 profession are loth to see their large farms — on which the accustomed 

 staple produce can be raised most economically by the use of labour- 

 saving machinery and wholesale working, according to long estab- 

 lished and accepted rules — taken from them and replaced by a 

 congeries of small holdings, the look of which on the map one writer 

 has derisively described as " a patchwork quilt." Well, " patch- 

 work quilt " though it be, if it but promises to meet the demands 

 which the nation makes upon the land, it will not be amiss, and will 

 eventually have to be put up with. But of course no one in his senses 

 is thinking of applying the cutting-up process in such unsparing way. 

 You do not in vinegrowing countries, the Languedoc, Italy, Rhine- 

 land, see nothing but vines grown, nor in the cotton-growing coun- 

 tries nothing but cotton — although vines and cotton respectively, 

 and very reasonably, there form the chief produce raised, the pro- 

 duce which agriculturally " sets the tune." There will be plenty of 

 land left for other cultivation. And indeed one has a good right to 

 hope to see plenty of new land added to what is now subjected to 

 farming, in this respect of the old-fashioned type, as the pinch of the 

 steady, and necessarily intensified extension of small holdings cornea 

 to be seriously felt, and agriculture, pressed, will naturally seek Eoi 

 " pastures new." There are many thousands of acres of laud capable 

 of being cultivated that are not so. And there is as wide an area 

 now undercultivated which might and ought to be made greatly 

 more productive. There is much undercultivated land which under 

 slovenly or niggardly Canning — the consequence generally of more 

 land being occupied than the farmer's purse will suffice for— product's 



