The Land and the Community. 155 



between the market value of land and its agricultural value 

 rapidly increased ; so that the tendency has long been for the 

 area of soil cultivated by its owner to decrease, until it has 

 gradually grown more and more impossible to comply with 

 the wishes of the earlier economists in this respect. In fact, 

 the Small Holdings Act of 1892 is a progress as far in this 

 direction as it would be prudent for any Government to take, 

 though a century before Arthur Young had recognised the 

 advantages of some such stepping-stone from the position of 

 rural labourer to that of farmer.^ Economists of this early 

 period, however, failed to find any system of agriculture that 

 could be rendered profitable to the English peasant-proprietor ; 

 for they despised pig and poultry farming, and ignored vege- 

 table gardening altogether. The majority of them viewed 

 with the greatest disfavour that land system left to this 

 country as a legacy by the feudal lords of the Norman polity. 

 As early as Tudor times the adverse influences of the famous 

 statute De Donis, dealing with entails, had been pointed 

 out. Lord Bacon had said that this Act hindered men who 

 possessed entailed lands, so that they could not make the 

 most of them by fine and improvement ; because none upon 

 so uncertain a state, as for the term of his own life, would 

 give him a fine of any value, or lay any great stock upon the 

 land that might yield rent, improved."^ Adam Smith could 

 find no terms of condemnation strong enough to convey his 

 dislike of a land system which interfered with his views of 

 philosophical agriculture. " To improve land with profits," 

 says he, "like all other commercial projects, requires an 

 exact attention to small savings and gains,^ of which a man 

 born to a great fortune, even though naturally frugal, is very 

 seldom capable. The situation of such a person naturally 

 disposes him to attend rather to ornament, which pleases his 

 fancy, than to profit, for which he has so little occasion. The 



* Farmers^ Kalendar, Introduction. A. Young. 



- On the Use of the Law. 



' Could this be the same man who ignored, as too trivial, pig and poul- 

 try farming? Compare Wealth of Nations, Bk. III. ch. ii. p. 157, with 

 Bk. I. ch. xi. p. 315. 5th Edit., 1809. 



