138 A NEW AGRICULTURAL POLICY 



ness if not with hostility. But I have too 

 much love for my fellow-countrymen to let 

 them be tempted by the magic of property 

 to cut so mean a figure in the eyes of the 

 world. Under the black magic of property 

 thrift degenerates into a vice, and the jolly 

 English ploughman would be lost for ever 

 in the painfully respectable and petty-minded 

 peasant-proprietor who has no thought out- 

 side of his patch of land and the hoarding of 

 mean savings. 



I have yet to learn that even the English 

 labourer when turned tenant-farmer is more 

 desirable either as a citizen or as an agricul- 

 turist, than those who derive from farming 

 stock for many generations ; and rather than 

 a nation of peasant-proprietors I would fain 

 see England converted to one large joint-stock 

 farm. 



I would rather, I say, have England as a 

 large joint-stock farm with Lord Chaplin as 

 chief carter, Mr. Overman as chief bullock 

 tender, Mr. Rea, C.B.E., as chief shepherd, 

 Mr. Langford as chief cowman, Sir J. L. Green 

 as chief swineherd ; and, when Covent Garden 

 salesmen have as good Zionists gone home 

 to Jerusalem and builded their palaces and 

 tabernacles out of the money taken from our 

 market gardeners, Mr. Robbins, O.B.E., as 

 chief salesman of fruit and vegetables. He 

 may hanker after the flesh-pots of publicists 



