PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION xxix 



Government was to discourage ownerships under that 

 or under any other measure. The Minister in charge 

 of the Bill was frank and thorough on this point. 

 " If I thought," he said, " that under the Act of 1892 

 (see pp. 207-20) there was likely to be a large amount 

 of purchase by tenants in the future, I should be 

 inclined to limit rather than to extend the facilities for 

 that purpose." 



It is probable that under the Act of 1907 the 

 number of tenant holders will be increased, so great is 

 the demand for small holdings on any terms. So far 

 as this is the case the Act will be a success on the lines 

 on which it is framed ; but, as a means of attracting 

 people back to the land, and rooting them on the soil, 

 there is every likelihood that it will be an expensive 

 failure. In any case, such a measure — the mere out- 

 come of party politics — does not touch even the 

 fringe of a solution of the pressing question of the 

 land. 



It is the main object in these pages to show that 

 that solution can be found only in a measure of land 

 reform based on the principle of occtipying ownership 

 — thus securing the restoration of the two classes of 

 cultivators which form such an important part in the 

 economy of all other nations, and which, in the past, 

 formed an equally important part in that of our own 

 country, namely, the yeoman farmer and the peasant 

 proprietor. 



J. C 

 Edgbaston, 

 Birmingham, 

 March, 1908. 



