LESSONS OF O'CONNOR ESTATES 143 



methods. Minster Lovell, after various vicissitudes, 

 can be considered as distinctly beneficial to the 

 district as soon as the local agricultural population 

 had a chance to get on to the holdings on reason- 

 able terms. 



But whether successful or unsuccessful, these 

 experiments serve as wholesome object-lessons, and 

 illustrate the evils which are likely to attend any 

 schemes started without adequate knowledge. 

 Even the prosperous cases havetheir warnings. At 

 Dodford, for instance, where the cultivating occu- 

 piers are successful, the holdings are passing out of 

 their hands into those of absent capitalists. 



Mr. Doyle has criticized the whole thing in his 

 report to the Royal Commission on Agriculture in 

 1882, and is inclined to condemn the possibilities of 

 a further extension of the small-holding system 

 after examining into the failures connected with 

 this particular undertaking. He falls into that 

 error, so common to all who do not take a compre- 

 hensive view of the whole question, of generalizing 

 on isolated instances. He emphatically repudiates 

 the idea of anyone making a living on 4 acres, 

 because he confined his inquiries to the estates 

 where this was indeed impossible ; Dodford, where 

 it was successfully accomplished, he had not visited. 

 He admits the success of individual cases where the 

 holdings had been amalgamated, or where the 

 holders had other occupations, but does not appear 

 to see that this is in any way an argument for the 

 extension of such holdings. He says that small 



