SMALL-HOLDING OWNERSHIP 235 



facts that the new policy submitted to the country has 

 but a small prospect of success, except where farmers 

 are concerned, as differentiated from small-holders. 



The truth is, as the Danes are finding, that this 

 question presents a knot of problems hard to unravel. 

 My own suggestion, for what it is worth, would be that 

 by some necessary enlargements and modifications of 

 the existing Small-holdings Act of 1908, both systems, 

 namely that of freehold and that of leasehold, should 

 be tried concurrently, the applicant being in the future, 

 as he is now, given his choice between them. The 

 farmer, if he wishes, can then avail himself of the 

 former, and the small-holder of the latter alternative. 



It must not be forgotten, however, that there is 

 this difference between the circumstances of the two 

 countries. In Denmark no compulsory powers of 

 purchase exist, whereas in England they do exist. 

 Therefore the Danish trouble, so often insisted on 

 to me, of the running up of the price of land by the 

 eager demand for small-holdings to be purchased with 

 the aid of State money, would scarcely become 

 dangerous here, at any rate at first. I say at first, 

 because in the end, if the process of such purchases 

 went far enough, economic laws would certainly assert 

 themselves. In spite of compulsion the price of land 

 would rise, and no honest Government could pay 

 an owner a smaller sum for the acres which it seized, 

 than those acres would fetch in the open market. If 

 it did so it would be a robber wearing the mask of 

 benevolence. No one has a right to beggar Peter 

 for the convenience or the advancement of Paul. 



It will be noted that these remarks deal in the 

 main with the problem of the establishment of small- 

 holders on freeholds. They only touch on the larger 



