AGRICULTURAL HOLDINGS 139 



and sporting estates into market gardens; pasture our 

 sheep on the rough hill sides (their natural demesnes) 

 instead of on our best arable land, and our cows in our 

 low-lying water meadows, and then supplement this 

 by stall feeding as they do in other countries where 

 they raise a larger head of cattle per acre than we do; 

 rigorously stop the wasteful system of allowing these 

 animals to fatten on the cream of the land which should 

 rightly be regarded as the property and substance of the 

 people, who shall say that these things shall not be? 



They are impossible to-day because the blundering of 

 Governments, the insincerity of politicians, and the 

 ignorance of the people have made them impossible, but 

 go and ask any other civilised country in the world if 

 they have found it impossible to accomplish these things, 

 and they will laugh in your face. 



Take one concrete example: Belgium, for instance, Gompan- 



son with 



sends us of the surplus of her farm produce. We get Belgium 

 £1,229,000 worth of eggs and poultry annually from that 

 country. Do we suppose that she sends us her own farm 

 produce and then buys foreign eggs for her own con- 

 sumption? Belgium is far more densely populated than 

 our own country, with 630 head of population to the 

 square mile against our 360, or, in other words, about 

 twice as densely populated as the United Kingdom ; and 

 yet, in spite of this, she contrives to produce as much 

 butter as she requires for herself and something over for 

 export. 



Then Belgium has another surprise for us. She has but 

 a tiny cultivable area, only 4,350,000 acres, and yet she 

 manages to raise 1,154,721 pigs, while we, with our 



