464 READINGS IN RURAL ECONOMICS 



amply satisfied ; secondly, he is independent, having no appre- 

 hensions for the future ; he need not fear being ejected from his 

 farm, or having to pay more, in proportion as he improves the 

 land by his labour. 



Yet the mode of living of the little landowner, who works as a 

 peasant, differs very little from that of the tenant-farmer. His 

 food is about the same, except that he eats bacon more frequently, 

 killing a pig or two for his own use, and that he drinks more beer. 

 His clothes, habits, and dwelling also resemble those of the other 

 class, save that they denote rather easier circumstances. He lays 

 money by to purchase land and give his farm a better outline ; 

 and it is owing to the competition of peasant-proprietors in the 

 land-market that the value of real property is rising so rapidly. 



What remains to be desired is not that the peasant-proprietor 

 should add to or refine his wants, for the progress of civilisation 

 is not co-extensive with that of epicureanism, 1 but that he should 

 pay more attention to his own intellectual improvement, and to 

 this a portion of his annual savings might very well be devoted. 



The situation of the small Flemish tenant-farmers is, it must be 

 owned, rather a sad one. Owing to the shortness of their leases, 

 they are incessantly exposed to having their rents raised or their 

 farms taken from them. Enjoying no security as to the future, 

 they live in perpetual anxiety. So much does this fear of having 

 their rents raised tell upon their minds, that they are afraid to 

 answer any question about farming, fancying that an increase of 

 rent would be the inevitable consequence. 



Rack-rents leave the small farmer barely enough to subsist on. 

 I do not think his working capital returns three per cent, and he 

 works himself like a labourer. However, he is always properly 

 clothed, and on Sundays he dresses just like a bourgeois. His 

 wife and daughters, who work barefooted during the week, are 

 stylishly dressed on Sunday, wearing crinolines, ornaments, and 



flowers in their hair. 



t 



1 In my opinion it is a great mistake to consider the refinement of wants and 

 luxury in private life as a criterion of civilisation. In the best days of ancient 

 Greece, private comfort was all but unknown. In ancient India and Judaea the 

 men whose minds conceived the ideas on which our moral life is based lived in 

 quite a primitive way. 



