154 History of the English Landed Interest. 



plough has obliterated the necessity for small fields, and 

 utilised the ground formerly occupied by the fences between 

 them. 



Now, from Young's point of view, we have shown that the 

 greatest possible quantity of direct human food was the chief 

 object worthy of the State's attention. Sheep were all very 

 well when kept on the enclosed holdings and fattened for 

 human food by means of turnips and artificially sown grasses ; 

 but when maintained in large flocks on the wastes, principally 

 for the sake of their wool, they ceased to be desirable in his 

 eyes. This induced him to confer an exaggerated favouritism 

 on the large arable farm. But other schools of thought were 

 not so narrow in their views ; and to them any form of hus- 

 bandry which commended itself to the individual would 

 appear best in the interests of the Society. Two consequences 

 ensued : first, that any landed system which interfered with the 

 free scope of the farmer was to be deprecated ; and secondly, 

 greater possibilities were forthcoming out of this more catho- 

 lic policy for the smaller freeholder in the existing landed 

 economy. 



In the two qualities of intelligence and industry the French 

 peasant had been shown by Young to be greatly the superior 

 of the English labourer, and both these qualities were loudly 

 demanded by many agricultural reformers of the period. 

 Apart from this consideration, there was the fact that the 

 landowner is far more interested in permanently increasing 

 the remunerative properties of his farm than is the landholder. 

 The difficulties in the way of co-operative labour among small 

 landed proprietors, which would have prejudiced economists of 

 the Adam Smith school against the introduction of small free- 

 holds, were capable of being circumvented by some intelligent 

 method, — such, for example, as the irrigation schemes carried 

 out by the small proprietors of Norwegian soil. A compromise 

 between the large tenancy and the small freehold — in other 

 words, a system of large agricultural freeholds farmed by their 

 proprietors — might have been invented, so as to have satisfied 

 the conditions laid down by the majority of economists. But 

 as this country became more thickly populated, the difference 



