148 LANDLOEDS A NATUEAL GEOWTH 



soil setting up perches for rabbits to roost upon. If 

 economic laws, precedents, history, experience, national 

 justice, and national security still weigh for anything with 

 the legislature, the conversion of the State into a land 

 agency for the immediate and artificial creation of a 

 peasant proprietary may be dismissed to the limbo of 

 crude panaceas and unpractical theories. 



Nor should it be forgotten, in the interest of landlords, 

 that all the improvements in English agriculture, which 

 have given us, speaking generally, an undisputed supre- 

 macy in the art of farming, have been effected by private 

 capital and individual enterprise. In these days of com- 

 petition, agriculture must advance or retrograde. Peasant 

 proprietors cannot conduct expensive experiments or invest 

 money in the improvement of stock. If the State creates 

 a class of small owners, it must be at the same time pre- 

 pared to assume the expenses which have hitherto fallen 

 on private individuals. In France, for instance, where a 

 peasant proprietary exists, the State stands in the place of 

 the landlords. Where properties are large State inter- 

 ference is rarely necessary, because enlightened self-interest 

 generally coincides with public policy. But among amass 

 of ignorant, small owners, minute, isolated policies prevail, 

 and the State alone regards larger interests. In the 

 eighteenth'century, the existence, not merely the commerce, 

 of England imperatively demanded large holdings, owned 

 by capitalist landlords, and let to capitalist tenants. By 

 this means only, when no foreign pi'oduce supplemented 

 native resources, could the soil supply food for its vast 

 population. France has felt no such overwhelming pres- 

 sure of population ; no inexorable law of demand and 

 supply has divorced her peasantry from the soil. In Eng- 

 land, for public purposes, the State favoured the growth 



