THE STATE AND AGRICULTURE 161 



Hungary ; and that later Governments, having 

 this land on their hands, sought to turn it to 

 good purpose by assuming the role of thrifty 

 and enterprising husbandmen. In a country 

 where the agricultural interest is paramount 

 they thought to set some good examples of 

 agricultural methods, and try to induce the 

 people to follow them. 



In the next place the intellectual and economic 

 status of considerable sections of the inhabitants 

 — especially those of the type of the Slavs and 

 Rumanians — coupled with a lack of initiative 

 and an inadequate development of the trading 

 spirit, made a liberal degree of State guidance 

 and State help more justifiable in Hungary than 

 would be the case to anything like the same 

 extent in such a country as Great Britain. 



The combination of these two conditions has 

 helped to bring about results that are certainly 

 remarkable enough in their way. In the first 

 place the State owns 3,700,000 acres of forests, 

 the management of which, together with that 

 of 3,000,000 acres of communal forests, and 

 8,050,000 acres belonging to other corporations, 

 is entrusted to the Minister of Agriculture. To 

 encourage the re-planting of forests and barren 

 territories the State distributed, between 1883 

 and 1901, no fewer than 358,000,000 shoots 



M 



