SMALL-HOLDINGS AT HILLEROD 117 



owned some large estates which it had split up into 

 small-holdings. This had proved satisfactory enough 

 to the State, which had sold its land well, but not to 

 the small-holders, as owing to the good quality of the 

 soil and the competition resulting from the number of 

 the applicants, they had been obliged to buy too dear. 

 Personally (like Mr. Waage), he would prefer to see a 

 leasehold system in force, although (unlike Mr. Waage) 

 he would limit that leasehold to the term of the life of 

 the leaseholder and his wife. He said that under the 

 leasehold system all the capital of the small-holder 

 would be available to furnish his farm with stock and 

 implements. 



I confess that I could not follow his argument on 

 this point, since, as I have already shown, the rent 

 which the leaseholder must pay would differ very little 

 from the annual amount demanded from the freeholder 

 in order to discharge his obligations to the State in a 

 period of a little under a hundred years. The only 

 extra sum that would remain available as working 

 capital would be the tenth of the purchase price, which 

 the law requires that he should possess. This, how- 

 ever, amounts to something, and is so far an argument 

 in Mr. Bernild's favour. I should add that he admitted 

 that the ordinary Danish peasant would not be as well 

 satisfied with a leasehold as he was with a freehold, 

 notwithstanding any disadvantages that the latter 

 might possess. 



Leaving Hillerod, I drove over a swamp that is in 

 process of being reclaimed. Dotted about its borders 

 were labourers' cottages. Near the road grew some 

 old beeches, and also a young oak wood where, from 

 the regularity of the saplings, I judged that the acorns 

 must have been drilled. Further on were the holdings 



