The Land and the Community. 153 



agricultural tenancies as possible. Hence we may infer that 

 the large landed capitalist was not altogether an abomination 

 in his eyes. In fact, when the French case came to be applied 

 to the circumstances of English rural life, he found it to be 

 wholly unsuitable. A general system of peasant proprietor- 

 ship would have revolutionised our landed system. The only 

 possibility for the small agriculturist in the landed economy 

 as then (and now) composed, was as a tenant ; and even could 

 all the small farmers in the kingdom have been converted by 

 some magic agency into freeholders, all Young's objections to 

 igetUe culture on this side the Channel would have applied. 

 The small farm, either for purposes of corn^ grass, or mixed 

 husbandry, required too much manual labour, for which the 

 sum total derived from marketing its disposable produce 

 afforded no adequate remuneration. The small farmer seldom 

 had sufficient capital or science to practise any but the meanest 

 improvements. It was very difficult to utilise entirely the 

 horse power which was required in harvest and seed-time at 

 less busy periods of the year. The reduction to a minimum 

 of necessary building room afforded insufficient accommoda- 

 tion for rearing livestock, while the multiplication of farm 

 homesteads on an over-divided estate considerably swelled the 

 items of unproductive expenditure.^ But why need we speak 

 in the past tense ? Do not the same objections apply equally 

 at the present day, only that they are less prominent, because 

 dwarfed by those circumstances which had not come into 

 being when Young wrote. We know now that on the large 

 holding there is that division and co-operation of labour which 

 would have gladdened the heart of Adam Smith to picture. 

 The evolution of machinery, the application of steam power 

 to all the more important farming operations, has gone far to 

 settle the question in favour of the large holding without the 

 necessity of resorting to other arguments. The cost of a 

 threshing-machine is beyond the means of any but the largest 

 farming capitalist. The small holder, who hires it, must wait 

 his turn, employ additional labour when using it, and defray 

 the cost of its locomotion from place to place. The steam 

 * Annals 0/ Agriculture, passim. 



