252 RURAL DENMARK 



successful agriculturist, and to enable him to cultivate 

 upon whatever scale he preferred. 



Moreover, the temporary accumulation of large 

 areas in one hand would not matter, since at the death 

 of their owner, if above a prescribed acreage, as a rule 

 these would be distributed among his children, unless 

 those children should choose to arrange otherwise 

 between themselves. This they often do in the 

 Channel Islands, where similar laws are in force. 1 

 Upon such distribution the State would rely for the 

 circulation of land rather than upon the principle of 

 compulsory purchase which has recently been intro- 

 duced into our English system, bringing much bitter- 

 ness in its train. The word compulsion as applied to 

 the hiring or purchase of land would probably be ruled 

 out of our statute-book ; all such transactions be- 

 coming, as in Denmark, matters of voluntary agree- 

 ment between man and man. 



Now what would be the results of fundamental 

 changes such as I have roughly sketched above? 

 First and foremost, as I firmly believe, much of our 

 land under the new system would produce nearly double 

 what it does at present. The reader may be inclined 

 to consider this a wild statement, as no doubt it 

 might be designated if applied to picked farms to be 

 met with in many places throughout the country, or 

 even to certain fertile districts where by the intel- 

 ligence and skill of man the soil is forced to do its 

 best. But as applied to great areas in England this 

 is not the case. There are thousands of acres now 

 rented that do not yield much more than one-half 

 of what they ought to do. 



1 See "Rural England" (New Edition), vol. i. p. 70. H. R. H. 



