112 THE MURDER OF AGRICULTURE 



" Was this Bill to be the means of giving doles to 

 deserving Radical agents and other politicians, who had 

 waded through Chinese slavery and other terminological 

 inexactitudes, and who had failed to obtain from the 

 Lord Chancellor the dignity of Justice of the Peace? 

 Were these persons to be presented at the cost of a 

 country with a small holding, with the buildings upon 

 it?" 



Now, personally, we don't care a brass farthing for 

 Radical agents or the Radical party; nor do we, for 

 that matter, care a fig for any party. We only ask for 

 good government, and if we get it, we don't care which 

 party is in and which is out. 



In this case the Government of the day made an 

 honest attempt to emancipate the people from some of 

 the evils which beset them, and they were howled at for 

 their pains. 



The Bill is good in its way, but it does not go far 

 enough ; it lacks those easy facilities for creating peasant 

 proprietorships which the Small Holdings Bill of 1892, 

 for example, provides for. But then that Bill was by no 

 means perfect, partly for the reason that its sphere of 

 application was too limited, and partly because, in 

 placing its operation in the hands of County Councils, 

 the Government rang its death knell. Go and ask the 

 County Councils what they have done with the country's 

 mandate to create a number of peasant proprietors up 

 to the limit of the Act, and they will tell you that their 

 combined efforts have resulted in the creation of small 

 proprietory farms, aggregating a few hundred acres. 



Here is really a useful measure, intended by Govern- 



