180 LAND LAWS AND TEANSFER 



tliaii by small farms conducted as domestic industries. 

 Socially the advantages of a class of peasant owners are 

 indisputably great. The rural economy of the nation 

 would benefit by the diffusion of land ownership, and farm- 

 ing offers no exception to the rule that two strings to the 

 bow are better than one. If legislation is only invoked to 

 remove artificial aids to the aggregation of large estates, 

 the process will not foster that sense of insecurity which 

 has paralysed the energies of landlords, and rendered 

 chronic the enfeebled state of agriculture. Already signs 

 appear of a tendency towards the multiplication of small 

 tenant-farmers, if not of small owners. Small holdings 

 obstructed progress so long as capital was required for the 

 reclamation, enclosure, or drainage of land. But at the 

 present day this argument loses much of its force. So 

 again, while England depended for grain on home supplies, 

 corn could be produced more economically on large farms. 

 Now, when prices render its home production unremunera- 

 tive, and foreign supplies are adequate to our wants, another 

 argument for large farms is at least modified. Small 

 farmers, content with small profits, depending on gardens, 

 livestock, and dairies, commanding the unpaid labour of 

 their own families, may make both ends meet, where larger 

 capitalists go through the Court. If agriculture is tending 

 in this direction, legislation must remove all hindrances to 

 its natural course ; landlords are sufficiently alive to their 

 own interests to do the rest. The risk of forcing streams 

 into artificial channels is increased by the arguments which 

 have been urged, from an economic point of view, against 

 the creation in this country of peasant proprietors. In the 

 uncertainty of their success under the changed conditions 

 of modern agriculture, it is madness for the State to dic- 

 tate, by positive legislation, the direction of their advance. 



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